GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE 
AND  MYRRH 

RALPH  ADAMS  CRAM 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE 
AND  MYRRH 


GOLD 

FRANKINCENSE 
AND  MYRRH 

BY 

RALPH  ADAMS  CRAM 


LITT.D.,   LL.D. 


BOSTON 

MARSHALL  JONES  COMPANY 
M  D  CCCC  XIX 


Copyright,  1919 
BY  MARSHALL  JONES  COMPANY 


All  rights  reserved 
First  printing,  November,  1919 


THE   UNIVERSITY  PRESS,   CAMBRIDGE,  U.  S.  A. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFACE vii 

MONASTICISM  AND  THE  WORLD  CRISIS  I 

SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE  FUTURE       .  34 

THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY  .     .  67 


PREFACE 

OF  the  three  addresses  that  make  up 
this  volume,  the  first  was  delivered 
in  1917  before  the  students  of  the 
General  Theological  Seminary  in  New 
York,  the  second  at  the  fiftieth  anniversary 
of  the  Confraternity  of  the  Blessed  Sacra- 
ment, at  the  Church  of  St.  Mary  the  Virgin 
in  New  York,  in  1918,  while  the  third  was 
read  at  a  meeting  of  the  Clerical  Brother- 
hood of  the  Episcopal  Church  in  the  Dio- 
cese of  Pennsylvania,  at  Philadelphia,  in 
1919.  All  three  have  been  published  in 
The  American  Church  Monthly,  and  per- 
mission to  reprint  has  been  given  by  the 
editor,  the  Reverend  Selden  Peabody  De- 
lany,  D.D.  The  third  of  the  addresses, 
"The  Philosophical  Necessity,"  has  also 
been  republished  by  the  Reverend  Thomas 
Edward  Shields,  D.D.,  in  The  Catholic 
Rducational  Review. 

For  the  doctrines,  statements  and  infer- 
ences that  are  to  be  found  in  the  three 
addresses,  no  responsibility  can  in  any  de- 
[  vii] 


PREFACE 

gree  be  attached  to  the  governing  body  of 
the  General  Theological  Seminary  or  to 
the  officers  of  the  Confraternity  of  the 
Blessed  Sacrament  or  to  the  Bishop  of 
Pennsylvania.  The  various  papers  were 
read  without  having  been  first  given  a 
nihil  obstat  by  any  one  in  authority,  and 
I  desire  to  take  entirely  on  my  own  shoul- 
ders the  responsibility  for  what  I  have 
said.  As  the  third  essay  is  in  a  sense  an 
extension  and  amplification  of  the  second, 
and  as  it  was  given  before  a  different  audi- 
ence, certain  repetitions  occur,  but  it  has 
seemed  best  to  leave  the  papers  in  their 
original  estate,  except  that  from  the  second 
has  been  omitted  the  philosophical  argu- 
ment for  the  doctrine  of  Transubstantiation 
(this  also  was  left  out  in  The  American 
Church  Monthly)  which  was  later  ampli- 
fied into  the  Philadelphia  address. 

The  title  "  Gold,  Frankincense  and 
Myrrh"  means  simply  this:  Gold  is  the 
pure,  imperishable  quality  of  the  monastic 
ideal,  Frankincense  the  supreme  act  of 
worship  through  the  Blessed  Sacrament, 
Myrrh  the  saving  quality  of  a  right  philoso- 
phy of  life  that  yet  must  be  bitter  to  the 
taste  of  many  people.  Together  they  are 
[  viii  ] 


PREFACE 

the  three  gifts  that  must  again  be  offered 
by  a  world  once  more  led,  though  now  by 
the  red  and  malefic  star  of  war,  to  worship 
and  fall  down  before  the  Incarnate  God 
so  long  and  so  lightly  denied. 

RALPH  ADAMS  CRAM. 
23rd  June,  1919. 


[  i 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE 
AND  MYRRH 


MONASTICISM  AND  THE 
WORLD  CRISIS 

Ei  all  the  manifestations  of  natural 
forces,  like  the  pulsing  of  the  life- 
blood,  like  life  itself,  history  is  a 
system  of  vast  vibrations,  systole  and  diastole 
beating  eternally,  but  with  nodes  that  are 
separated  not  by  fractional  seconds,  but  by 
intervals  of  five  centuries.  From  the  day 
of  the  Incarnation,  back  through  Europe, 
Asia,  Africa,  until  chronology  merges  in 
myth  and  tradition,  and  on,  even  to  this 
day,  and  so  forward  until  the  end,  this 
enormous  vibration  controls  and  conditions 
man,  and  he  plays  his  part  on  the  rise,  the 
crest,  or  the  descent  of  the  wave,  helpless 
to  change  its  course  or  to  avert  its  fall. 

The  fable  of  evolution,  the  delusion  of 
continuous  progress,  the  dream  of  the  final 
perfectibility  of  man  on  earth,  break  down 
and  die  under  the  hard  light  of  universal 
catastrophe,  vanishing  with  all  the  other 
illusions  of  modernism  that  have  made  that 
catastrophe  not  a  ghastly  accident  but  an 
[i  1 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND   MYRRH 

expiation  and  a  potential  redemption,  while 
blinding  the  world  to  its  implacable  ap- 
proach. For  the  individual  there  may  be 
progress,  but  the  rise  from  birth  to  maturity 
is  followed  by  declension  to  the  grave.  For 
the  community  or  the  state  there  may  be 
progress,  but  the  upward  sweep  of  the  elan 
vital  curves  at  last,  in  its  brief  trajectory,  to 
merge  again  in  the  inert  mass  through 
which  it  sprang,  and  the  jungles  of  Asia, 
the  sands  of  African  deserts,  the  forests  of 
Europe  hide  the  forgotten  shards  of  uni- 
versal civilizations  whose  names  are  words 
only,  and  whose  deeds  are  of  the  dust  that 
buries  their  monuments.  For  mankind  it- 
self there  may  be  progress,  out  of  periodical 
misery  and  oblivion,  upward  to  honour  and 
dignity  and  worth  and  power,  but  always 
the  parabola  traces  its  dying  fall,  and  this 
spurt  of  progress  lasts  not  five  centuries, 
beyond  which  term  nothing  may  pass  with- 
out failure,  extinction  and  supersession. 

History  is  a  series  of  resurrections,  for 
the  rhythm  of  change  is  invariable.  Each 
epoch  of  five  hundred  years  follows  the 
same  monotonous  course,  though  made  dis- 
tinctive by  new  variations.  Since  the  Chris- 
tian era  Imperial  Rome  ha§  risen,  culmi- 

[2] 


MONASTICISM  AND  WORLD  CRISIS 

nated  and  disappeared  "under  the  drums 
and  tramplings  of  four  conquests."  The 
Eastern  Empire  has  succeeded,  with  the 
first  congeries  of  Christian  states  in  the 
West.  Medievalism  has  burst  like  a  new 
day  on  Europe,  to  go  to  its  end  five  cen- 
turies later  as  our  own  epoch  began  its 
astounding  career.  The  birth  of  Christ, 
the  years  500,  1000,  1500,  are  nodal  points 
when  all  that  had  been  ceased  and  new 
things  came  into  being:  before  the  year 
2000,  now  but  two  generations  away,  mod- 
ern civilization  will  have  passed  and  a 
new  era  have  taken  its  place.  Already 
the  whirlwind  of  destruction  has  overtaken 
it,  and  for  more  than  three  years,  it  has 
suffered  the  first  of  the  assaults  that  will 
in  the  end  make  it  one  with  Babylon  and 
with  Nineveh. 

We  are  today  in  the  midst  of  just  such  a 
grinding  collapse  as  that  which  overtook 
Rome  and  the  empire  of  Charlemagne 
and  the  Christian  Commonwealths  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  we  shall  escape  no  more 
than  they.  Neither  scientific  accomplish- 
ment nor  efficiency,  neither  parliamentary 
government  nor  industrialism,  neither 
wealth  nor  self-confidence,  neither  pacifism 
[31 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

nor  neutrality  can  save  us,  for  we  have 
reached  the  crest  of  folly  that  crowns 
achievement,  and  beyond  lies  the  shudder- 
ing fall  into  the  trough  of  the  heaving 
sea.  But  the  wave,  if  it  falls,  rises  again, 
and  history,  if  it  shouts  its  warning,  whis- 
pers also  its  hope.  If  night  follows  day, 
day  follows  night,  and  since  Christ  came 
we  have  not  only  the  hope  but  the  way. 
And  the  way  has  never  changed  in  essence, 
though  it  has  varied  widely  in  its  manifesta- 
tions. As  Rome  fell,  St.  Benedict  of  Nursia 
rose  above  the  welter  of  ruin  to  save  what 
might  be  saved  and  to  build  society  anew. 
As  the  first  Holy  Roman  Empire  broke 
down  in  ruin,  St.  Odo  of  Cluny  in  his  turn 
saved  something  from  the  wreck,  began 
the  new  era  of  Christian  civilization  in 
the  North,  and  gave  it  to  St.  Robert  of 
Molesmes,  who  transformed  it  by  Cister- 
cianism  into  a  thing  of  unexampled  nobil- 
ity and  fixed  forever  the  standard  type  of 
Christian  society.  When  at  last  this  also 
began  to  decline,  its  time  having  arrived,  a 
sudden  new  life  swept  through  the  mori- 
bund orders, — Benedictine,  Cistercian,  Do- 
minican,— 'making  them  once  more  con- 
structive and  regenerative  agencies,  while 
[4] 


MONASTICISM  AND  WORLD  CRISIS 

by  means  of  an  entirely  novel  version  of  the 
monastic  method,  St.  Ignatius  Loyola 
stopped  the  progress  of  devouring  heresy 
and  concentrated  in  centres  of  tremendous 
dynamic  force  the  shattered  and  dislocated 
elements  of  Catholic  Christianity,  that  they 
might  engender  the  counter-reformation 
and  preserve  fundamental  Christianity  until 
better  days. 

So  in  the  first  years  of  the  sixth  cen- 
tury, the  last  years  of  the  tenth,  and  the 
first  years  of  the  sixteenth,  at  intervals 
of  approximately  five  hundred  years,  just 
at  the  nodal  point  where  one  era  was 
dying  in  dishonour,  and  another  rising  in 
power,  came  a  new  outpouring  of  monastic 
fervour  to  save  and  to  recreate.  In  the  year 
927  St.  Odo  promulgated  the  reformed  rule 
of  the  Order  of  Cluny,  and  the  Dark  Ages 
came  to  an  end  within  sixty  years,  to  give 
place  to  Christian  civilization.  One  thou- 
sand years  from  then  will  bring  us  to  the 
year  1927,  but  we  need  not  wait  until  then 
for  the  assurance  that  God  has  again  been 
merciful  and  given  the  world  a  new  hope, 
for  nearly  fifty  years  ago  came  the  first 
evidences  of  the  new  life,  and  now  the 
death  of  civilization  seals  the  early  assur- 
[51 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

ance,  and  everywhere  may  be  seen  the 
stirrings  of  the  Holy  Spirit  leading  men 
once  more  into  this  earthly  army  of  God. 

For  it  is  the  consecrated  Religious  Life 
that  has  been  the  divine  agency  for  the  sav- 
ing of  the  world  at  all  its  moments  of  most 
critical  peril;  and  if  you  will  study  the 
phenomena  of  periodic  degeneration,  and 
the  spirit  and  method  of  monasticism,  you 
will  see  that  this  must  inevitably  be  so.  As 
each  era  of  the  world  reaches  its  fulfilment, 
it  suddenly  festers  into  five  cancerous  sores : 
wealth  and  luxury,  lust  and  licentiousness, 
wilfulness  and  individualism,  leading  in 
the  end  to  anarchy,  envy  and  egotism,  and 
finally  the  idleness  of  the  parasite.  You 
will  find  most  of  these,  in  varying  measure, 
in  the  last  years  of  Rome,  of  the  Carolin- 
gian  Empire  and  the  Eastern  Empire,  of 
the  epoch  of  Medievalism;  and  you  will 
find  them  all,  and  without  measure,  in  the 
last  years  of  the  nineteenth  and  the  elapsed 
years  of  the  twentieth  century. 

Now  against  them  the  Religious  Life 
has  set  the  three  great  evangelical  councils 
of  Poverty,  Chastity  and  Obedience,  add- 
ing to  them  two  other  principles  of  equal 
value,  viz.,  Brotherhood  and  Work.  Each 
[6] 


MONASTICISM  AND  WORLD   CRISIS 

is  the  explicit  negation  and  corrective  of 
some  one  of  the  sins  of  success,  and  together 
they  form  the  energizing  force  that  brings 
a  new  era  into  being. 

There  is  no  other  way.  As  an  era  dies, 
it  engenders  an  all-embracing  mortality  in 
its  members,  and  there  is  nothing  essentially 
of  itself,  either  in  its  works  or  its  men,  that 
retains  regenerative  power.  When  an  age 
dies,  it  dies  altogether,  though  such  spirit- 
ual force  as  it  may  have  generated  continues 
beyond  its  own  decadence  and  fall  as  a 
slowly  dissipating  impulse  in  art.  In  the 
end  this  is  dispersed  and  art  ceases  for  the 
time,  but  it  never  had  a  truly  vital  quality 
in  the  establishing  and  determining  of 
spiritual  values,  rinding  its  function  only  in 
an  empty  aestheticism  that  ended  at  last  in 
the  various  historical  predecessors  of  art 
nouveau  and  vers  libre.  As  in  all  life,  the 
dynamic  impulse  towards  new  things  comes 
from  without,  a  sudden  jet  of  the  elan  vital, 
expressing  itself  through  a  swift  intensifica- 
tion—  exaggeration  if  you  like  —  of  those 
fundamental  principles  of  all  wholesome 
society  that  have  been  lost  out  of  life  and 
must  in  some  way  be  restored. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  maintain  that  the 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

monastic  life  is  an  universal  ideal :  the  claim 
is  not  even  made.  It  is  rather  a  highly 
special  form  of  life,  normally  fitted  for 
comparatively  few  men  and  women ;  but  at 
abnormal  times,  such  as  the  closing  years  of 
an  epoch,  it  becomes  not  a  refuge  but  a  duty 
and  a  call  to  sacrifice.  The  army  is  not 
the  normal  life  for  all,  but  at  critical  mo- 
ments, when  honour  and  justice  and  eternal 
truths  are  imperilled,  it  sends  its  clear  call 
to  all  men  for  holy  service  in  warfare. 
Nothing  can  take  its  place;  none  of  the 
agencies  of  peace  and  order  may  serve; 
and  if  men  do  not  arise,  and  at  any  cost, 
even  of  life  itself,  range  themselves  in  the 
front  of  battle,  nothing  follows  but  hu- 
miliation, disaster,  and  the  death  of  more 
than  men  and  women  and  children. 

The  Religious  Life  is  a  life  of  continual 
sacrifice,  but  nothing  of  enduring  value  in 
the  world  has  been  attained  except  through 
sacrifice.  Wealth  and  ease,  peace  and 
plenty,  material  success  and  serene  content, 
never  won  anything,  either  for  the  indi- 
vidual, the  community  or  the  state,  while 
they  lead  inevitably  to  decadence  and 
downfall.  Adversity  and  suffering,  sorrow 
and  labour  and  sacrifice,  are  the  builders 


MONASTICISM  AND  WORLD   CRISIS 

of  character,  the  foundation-stones  of  right- 
eous civilization.  Out  of  these  sacrifices 
that  monasticism  demands,  has  come  for 
myriads  of  men  and  women  more  than 
adequate  personal  compensation,  as  this 
comes  to  the  soldier  in  the  trenches  of 
France,  dying  a  clean  death  in  a  holy  cause. 
This,  however,  is  only  a  by-product;  the 
great  thing  is  the  unique  and  splendid  op- 
portunity for  service,  for  the  doing  of  what 
no  one  else  can  do,  and  this  the  noblest 
service  that  man  can  render  to  man.  For 
more  than  two  years  millions  of  men  and 
boys  have  sacrificed  all  that  life  could  give 
to  save  something  from  the  wreck  of  a 
world,  and  their  sacrifice  will  not  be  in  vain 
so  far  as  the  first  victory  at  arms  is  con- 
cerned. It  will,  in  the  end,  have  been  in 
vain  if  there  are  not  now  the  few  thousands 
of  their  brothers  to  make  their  smaller 
sacrifice  in  order  that  the  victory  they  have 
bought  with  their  blood  may  be  sealed  by 
that  spiritual  regeneration  which  always 
has  been,  and  always  will  be,  the  work  of 
those  whom  God  has  called  to  the  Religious 
Life. 

As  we  look  back  through  history  we  can 
see  how  terrible  was  the  fall,  how  gross  the 
[91 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

enveloping  darknesss  of  the  end  of  An- 
tiquity, of  the  close  of  the  Dark  Ages,  of 
the  break-up  of  Medievalism.  We  cannot 
imagine  what  fearful  fate  must  have  over- 
taken the  world  if  it  had  not  been  for  the 
followers  of  the  consecrated  Religious  Life, 
from  St.  Benedict  to  St.  Ignatius  Loyola. 
Today  the  fall  and  the  darkness  are  more 
profound  than  ever  before,  except  possibly 
at  the  end  of  the  Roman  Empire;  there- 
fore the  old  call  is  more  insistent  as  the  need 
is  correspondingly  greater.  Everything 
with  which  and  by  which  our  modern  era 
has  lived,  shatters  before  us,  and  no  visible 
foundation  remains.  Protestantism  and 
free  thought,  parliamentary  government 
and  democracy,  natural  science,  industrial 
civilization  and  material  efficiency,  evo- 
lutionary philosophy,  pragmatism,  deter- 
minism, freedom  of  speech  and  freedom  of 
the  press  and  compulsory  public  education 
—  all  these,  and  their  myriad  concomitants, 
crumble,  totter,  and  melt  away  before  the 
Frankenstein  monster  they  themselves  had 
created. 

I  do  not  mean  that  all  these  proud  prod- 
ucts of  modernism  now  show  themselves  as 
entirely  empty  delusions,   for  the  greater 
[  10] 


MONASTICISM  AND  WORLD   CRISIS 

part  of  them  express  some  element  of  truth 
or  usefulness.  In  every  case,  however,  they 
have  either  been  exaggerated  out  of  all 
reason,  falsified  by  removal  from  contact 
with  some  other  opposed  principle  which 
alone  could  have  acted  as  a  corrective,  or 
finally  their  original  idea  has  been  lost  sight 
of  under  some  mechanistic  incubus  we  have 
invented  as  a  means  to  an  end,  and  then  have 
accepted  as  the  end  in  itself,  to  the  utter 
forgetfulness  of  the  object  of  our  labour, 
which  has  consequently  disappeared.  An 
example  of  what  I  mean  is  democracy, 
which  is  a  splendid  ideal  in  itself,  and 
worth  fighting  for;  but  for  a  century  we 
have  been  so  ridiculously  busy  in  inventing 
new  engines  for  creating  it,  in  discovering 
new  panaceas  for  correcting  our  intermin- 
able failures,  that  at  last  we  have  not  the 
remotest  idea  in  what  democracy  consists, 
and  actually,  in  the  midst  of  an  insane 
phantasmagoria  of  political  devices,  have 
seen  not  only  the  humiliating  failure  of 
these  patented  nostrums  but  the  almost 
complete  disappearance  of  the  democratic 
idea  as  a  moving  cause  or  even  as  a  dim  and 
mythical  tradition. 

So  it  is  with  the  other  things  I   have 

[  "  1 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

named,  and  as  they  break  down  visibly 
before  us,  we  realize  that  the  very  founda- 
tions of  life  are  overturned,  that  our  light 
has  become  darkness,  and  we  have  no  guide 
for  our  steps.  We  have  made  our  world 
over  to  suit  ourselves,  and  at  the  very  mo- 
ment when  we  look  on  it  and  see  that  it 
is  good,  it  crumbles  into  mere  debris;  hol- 
low, unsubstantial,  insecure,  it  cannot  en- 
dure the  touch  of  real  life,  and  breaks  in 
pieces  of  its  own  unwieldiness. 

In  all  this  there  is  no  ground  for  final 
discouragement.  All  depends  on  how  we 
meet  the  crisis,  how  we  bear  the  test,  with 
what  standards  we  measure  the  new,  hard, 
and  even  appalling  things  that  are  put  be- 
fore us.  At  last  Calvinism  is  no  longer 
upon  us,  to  weigh  us  down  under  a  base 
fatalism.  We  know  our  choice  is  free,  and 
we  may  will  a  new  Dark  Ages  or  a  new  Ren- 
aissance—  better  still  a  new  Medievalism. 
All  depends  on  how  we,  ourselves,  meet  the 
issue. 

For  this  vast  cataclysm  is  not  a  trying 
out  of  individuals,  or  of  a  few  nations,  but 
of  all  men,  east,  west,  north  and  south. 
None  may  escape,  for,  each  in  its  own  de- 
gree, every  race  on  earth  lies  under  the 
[  12] 


MONASTICISM  AND  WORLD   CRISIS 

same  condemnation,  from  Russia,  which 
had  surrendered  least,  to  Prussia,  which 
had  surrendered  all.  A  system  nearly  five 
centuries  old  is  being  tried  that  it  may  be 
destroyed,  and  destroyed  that  something 
better  may  take  its  place. 

As  five  centuries  ago,  and  ten  and  fifteen 
and  twenty,  the  saving  motive  will  be  the 
Catholic  Faith,  poured  out  anew  upon  the 
nations;  and  as  five  centuries  ago,  and  ten 
and  fifteen,  the  visible  and  divinely  directed 
means  will  be  the  consecrated  Religious 
Life.  Not  through  archaic  and  pictorial 
revivals,  but  under  the  drive  of  a  new  spirit- 
ual consciousness  implanted  in  man  by  God 
the  Holy  Ghost,  working  itself  out  under 
old  rules  and  under  reformed  rules,  but 
in  essence  what  it  always  has  been  and  al- 
ways will  be.  Monasticism — I  use  the  term 
generally  as  including  all  types  of  monks, 
friars,  canons-regular,  and  missionaries 
bound  under  the  vows  of  poverty,  chastity, 
and  obedience  —  is  divine  in  its  essence  and 
its  order,  therefore  an  essential  and  inde- 
structible portion  of  the  visible  Catholic 
Church,  but  it  is  manifested  through  hu- 
man agencies,  therefore  fallible  and  des- 
tined to  decay  and  to  demand  reform; 
[  13] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

destined  equally  to  adapt  itself  to  new 
times  and  to  new  conditions.  Within  these 
great  and  closing  walls  of  poverty,  chas- 
tity and  obedience,  brotherhood  and  work, 
it  will  transmute  itself  into  new  forms,  but 
always  there  will  be  three  great  classes, 
the  general  motive  of  which  will  never 
change,  and  the  demand  for  which,  and 
for  all,  was  never  more  insistent  than 
today;  and  these  three  are  the  monk,  the 
friar  and  the  canon-regular.  Let  me  try 
to  show  why  each  is  needed  today,  whether 
he  lives  under  the  old  rules  of  St.  Bene- 
dict, St.  Francis  or  St.  Augustine,  or  under 
some  modification  thereof. 

The  ideal  of  the  true  monk  is  furthest 
from  the  spirit  of  today  —  or  rather  of 
yesterday.  There  is  no  "  today,"  but  only 
an  interlude  of  anarchy,  and  the  monk  is 
therefore  more  essential  at  this  crisis  than 
the  friar  or  the  canon-regular,  however 
imperative  may  be  the  demand  for  both, 
and  the  demand  is  insistent  and  clamorous. 
The  friar  and  the  canon-regular  are  the 
workers  of  visible  things,  and  a  world  of 
efficiency  and  "the  strenuous  life,"  whose 
gospel  is  "  get  results,"  can  measurably  un- 
derstand them.  The  monk,  cloistered,  shut 

[  Hi 


MONASTICISM  AND  WORLD   CRISIS 

away  from  active  contact  with  the  world, 
living  a  life  of  rigid  abstinence,  praying, 
praising  God  and  giving  himself  over  to 
intercession,  adoration  and  worship,  is  to 
the  world  unthinkable,  but  it  is  at  times 
like  this  that  the  world  needs  him  most. 
Action  —  feverish,  insistent,  universal  — 
has  built  up  a  world  that  has  failed,  and  out 
of  that  failure  will  come  the  consciousness 
that  the  real  things  in  life  are  of  the  spirit, 
not  of  the  flesh,  not  of  man  but  of  God. 
Great  and  glorious  works  have  come  from 
the  labours  of  men,  whether  they  were 
Religious  or  seculars  or  laymen,  but  the 
greatest  things  came,  not  from  their  physi- 
cal action  but  from  their  spiritual  energy; 
and  though  with  their  hands  they  have  built 
up  great  fabrics  of  civilization  and  given 
them  life  through  the  energy  of  ordered 
intellects,  the  soul  of  these  civilizations 
came  as  the  gift  of  God,  through  His  saints, 
and  because  of  the  prayers  and  intercessions 
and  the  worship  of  His  children.  The 
monk  who  made  a  desert  into  a  garden,  or 
turned  a  heathen  people  from  savagery,  did 
well,  but  he  did  better  when  prostrating 
himself  in  prayer  in  the  silence  of  his  cell, 
or  when  he  joined  with  his  brethren  in  be- 
[15] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

seeching  Our  Lady  and  the  saints  for  their 
intercessions,  or  in  worshipping  the  incar- 
nate God  in  the  Holy  Sacrament  of  the 
Altar. 

Our  age  is  dying  because  it  has  lost 
spiritual  energy,  and  therefore  no  longer 
knows  the  difference  between  the  real  and 
the  false,  the  temporal  and  the  eternal,  be- 
tween right  and  wrong,  and  this  spiritual 
energy  is  to  be  restored,  not  by  action,  but 
by  the  grace  of  God,  —  and  by  prayer  alone 
is  this  grace  given  to  men.  We  need  the 
spiritual  energy  that  emanates  from  the 
hushed  cloisters  and  the  dim  chapels  of 
brotherhoods  of  monks,  and  the  invincible 
force  of  their  intercessions.  If  only  we 
knew  that  here  and  there,  hidden  in  the  still 
country-side,  the  sons  of  St.  Benedict,  as  they 
were  in  the  sixth  century  and  the  eleventh, 
were  fighting,  day  and  night,  the  spiritual 
battle  that  is  more  arduous  even  than  the 
physical,  we  could  take  heart  of  hope  where 
now  is  opportunity  for  little  but  despair. 

Thus  far,  with  us,  scant  progress  has  been 
made  towards  the  restoration  of  a  strict 
monasticism,  all  our  new  orders  having 
been  formed  along  the  lines  of  communities 
of  canons-regular  or  friars.  Caldey  tried  it, 
[  16] 


MONASTICISM  AND  WORLD   CRISIS 

and  poor  Father  Ignatius  even  earlier,  but 
Ecclesia  Anglicana  had  no  place  for  that 
sort  of  thing  and  Caldey  was  forced,  by  the 
logic  of  consistency,  to  make  its  submission 
to  Rome.  Even  there  too  much  time  was 
given  to  preaching  far  afield,  and  to  other 
extraneous  objects,  just  as,  under  the  Roman 
obedience,  the  Benedictine  houses  have 
largely  forsaken  their  ordained  work,  in  the 
interests  of  schools  and  missions,  and  even 
the  cure  of  souls.  The  spirit  of  strict  mo- 
nasticism  seems  almost  wholly  to  have  died 
away,  and  because  of  this  the  present  peril 
of  the  world  is  increased.  Unless  it  can  be 
restored,  now,  without  loss  of  time,  the 
immediate  future  can  give  little  hope.  Un- 
fortunately to  few  is  given  the  monastic 
vocation,  and  when  it  is  vouchsafed,  only 
too  often  the  doubtful  listener  closes  his 
ears,  thinking,  under  the  black  inheritance 
of  strenuousness,  that  action  alone  will  "  get 
results,"  and  that  he  has  no  right  to  remain 
outside  the  ranks  of  those  who  are  everlast- 
ingly "  up  and  doing."  For  the  restoration 
of  a  clearer  sense  of  spiritual  values  we 
must  insistently  ]5ray,  and  if  the  world  is 
to  be  saved  from  an  era  of  the  Dark  Ages, 
sooner  or  later  our  prayer  will  be  answered. 
[17] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

Strictly  speaking,  the  orders  of  preach- 
ing friars  have  not  been  restored  with  us 
as  yet.  Rome  has  done  better  there  than 
with  the  monks,  the  Dominicans  having 
not  only  preserved  their  fine  tradition,  but 
of  late  acquired  a  new  fire  and  fervour  that 
have  made  them  a  great  vitalizing  power. 
In  England  the  Society  of  the  Divine  Com- 
passion is  a  genuinely  Franciscan  founda- 
tion, and  we  once  had  here,  in  Father  Paul, 
a  possible  centre  for  a  similar  work.  He 
has  now  accepted  Roman  jurisdiction  and 
is  finding  there  the  support  of  men  and  the 
charity  denied  him  in  his  earlier  days,  so 
all  this  must  be  done  over  again,  perhaps 
now,  under  the  conditions  of  the  present 
debacle,  with  better  chance  of  success. 

The  importance  to  us  of  an  immediate 
restoration  of  the  two  chief  orders,  Fran- 
ciscan and  Dominican,  cannot  be  overesti- 
mated. Our  fat  and  futile  social  organism, 
where  wealth  is  the  chief  stimulus  to  action, 
and  the  first  consideration  in  political,  in- 
dustrial and  social  affairs,  —  the  great  sub- 
stitution of  modernism  for  honour,  courage 
and  duty,  —  must  be  met  by  the  consecrated 
poverty  of  the  Franciscan,  fearlessly  de- 
nouncing a  condition  of  things  that,  when 
[  18  ] 


MONASTICISM  AND   WORLD   CRISIS 

civilization  returns  again,  will  be  bracketed 
in  later  histories  with  the  epochs  in  the 
Dark  Ages  and  during  the  Renaissance 
when  simony  had  rotted  the  Church  and 
society  to  a  point  wherefrom  recovery  was 
possible  only  by  the  direct  intervention  of 
God.  In  our  economic-industrial  state  we 
are  confronted  by  a  steady  progress  away 
from  the  free  association  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  back  to  the  "  Servile  State "  of  an- 
tiquity, with  the  certainty  that  before  this  is 
accomplished  there  will  be  war  that  is 
overt,  bloody  and  relentless.  If  we  are  to 
escape  this  I  believe  it  can  only  be  through 
the  intervention  of  the  poor  brothers  of 
St.  Francis,  glorifying  poverty,  love  and 
labour  over  and  above  the  principles  that 
are  now  the  guiding  stars  of  our  decline. 

And  what  of  the  Dominicans?  Surely, 
if  ever,  we  need  now  their  fearless  and  in- 
sistent defence  of  Catholic  truth.  It  is  a 
custom  to  call  ourselves  a  Christian  nation, 
just  as  before  the  war  we  spoke  of  the 
"Christian  civilization"  of  Europe.  It  is 
also  customary  for  some  of  us  to  speak  of 
the  Episcopal  Church  as  a  Catholic  Church. 
If  we  speak  from  a  lively  faith  our  convic- 
tions do  us  honour,  as  must  all  faith  that 
[  19] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

relies  on  an  inner  conviction,  not  on  ap- 
parent facts.  In  any  case  we  are  compelled 
to  admit  that  less  than  half  the  people,  of 
America  even,  call  themselves  Christians  of 
one  sort  or  another,  and  that  there  is  enough 
unblushing  heresy  high  in  honour  within 
the  Anglican  Church  to  bring  it  to  ship- 
wreck unless  it  meets  with  vigorous  coun- 
teraction. Neither  St.  Athanasius  nor  St. 
Dominic  nor  St.  Ignatius  Loyola  ever  con- 
fronted bolder  and  more  insidious  unfaith 
and  disloyalty.  Just  because  more  and  more 
Presbyterians  build  Gothic  churches,  with 
stained-glass  windows  and  twenty  thousand 
dollar  organs,  and  an  increasing  number  of 
our  clergy  wear  Eucharistic  vestments  and 
put  two  candles  (frequently  unlighted)  on 
their  altars,  we  think  that  all  is  well. 

Strong  defence  of  the  Catholic  Faith  and 
nothing  but  the  Catholic  Faith,  asserted 
openly,  everywhere  and  insistently,  is  a 
crying  need  of  our  time,  and  without  this 
every  effort  at  a  redemption  of  society  will 
fail,  unless  we  are  willing  to  count  alone 
on  the  "  uncovenanted  mercies  of  God." 
There  will  be  no  new  and  better  day  for 
the  world  unless  underneath  and  inter- 
penetrating present  life  and  the  social 
[20] 


MONASTICISM  AND  WORLD  CRISIS 

fabric  is  the  definite,  dogmatic,  and  sac- 
ramental religion  that  has  made  and 
preserved  the  Catholic  Church  and 
Christian  society  from  the  day  of  Pente- 
cost. Give  us  once  more  the  Order  of 
Preachers  of  St.  Dominic,  bound  under 
the  threefold  rule,  with  no  parochial  obli- 
gations, but  going  far  and  wide,  in  poverty 
and  in  the  willingness  for  martyrdom  if 
necessary,  and  we  shall  not  have  to  ask  so 
much  of  some  of  our  bishops  and  our  parish 
clergy  who  already  are  crushed  under  the 
weight  of  their  special  duties. 

The  third  class,  that  of  the  canons-regu- 
lar, really  comprises  the  greater  part  of  our 
Religious  Orders  today,  at  the  head  stand- 
ing the  Society  of  St.  John  the  Evangelist. 
Mission  priests  they  truly  are,  and  this  func- 
tion is  equal  in  importance  with  the  others 
I  have  named.  I  say  less  of  them  now,  for 
we  know  them  better,  and  no  word  is  neces- 
sary to  justify  them  or  to  add  to  the  demand 
that  their  numbers  should  be  increased. 
I  think,  however,  there  is  a  very  real  de- 
mand that  out  of  them  should  grow,  and 
immediately,  something  more  closely  re- 
sembling the  canons-regular  of  St.  Augus- 
tine or  those  of  St.  Norbert.  There  should 
[21  ] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

be,  under  every  bishop,  a  kind  of  diocesan 
monastery,  self-governing  and  self-con- 
tained, but  subject  to  the  call  of  the  bishop 
for  such  service  as  he  might  demand,  such 
as  evangelical  work  in  heathen  districts, 
temporary  charge  of  missions,  emergency 
service  in  parishes,  and  the  maintenance  of 
church  services  and  parish  work  where  a 
certain  minimum  stipend  could  not  be 
raised.  Such  houses  of  canons  should  re- 
ceive young  priests  immediately  after  or- 
dination, giving  them  work  "  under  service 
conditions,"  on  three-year  and  renewable 
vows,  and  also  superannuated  clergy  who 
would  form  a  nucleus  of  permanency.  If 
possible  young  men  should  be  trained  here 
for  the  priesthood,  and  small  schools  of 
orphan  boys  might  be  maintained.  Within 
its  precincts  the  house  would  be  self-govern- 
ing, with  the  bishop  as  visitor;  but  when  a 
man  was  called  out  for  active  service,  he 
would  become  the  bishop's  man,  owing  for 
the  time  obedience  to  him  alone.  Of  course, 
there  would  be  some  arrangement  whereby 
a  certain  number  of  men  would  always  be 
left  in  the  house  for  the  conduct  of  its  serv- 
ices and  internal  affairs,  while  no  man 
should  be  compelled  to  absent  himself  ex- 
[22] 


MONASTICISM  AND  WORLD   CRISIS 

cept  for  a  definite  number  of  days  at  a  time, 
during  which  period  the  bishop  would  be 
responsible  for  his  maintenance.  Every 
bishop  would  welcome  such  an  engine  of 
service  as  these  diocesan  monasteries  would 
prove,  and  they  seem  the  easiest  of  accom- 
plishment, since  normally  their  vows  would 
be  for  short  periods,  and  a  clear  vocation  to 
the  Religious  Life  —  the  hardest  thing  to 
find  or  to  be  sure  of  —  would  be  less  neces- 
sary than  in  the  case  of  monks  and  friars. 
In  a  way  each  house  of  this  kind  would  be 
a  place  for  the  discovering  and  testing  of 
vocations,  and  while  many  would  return  to 
the  secular  priesthood,  others  would  pro- 
ceed to  the  contemplative  or  the  active  life 
of  the  Benedictine  or  Dominican  or  Fran- 
ciscan rules. 

Of  these  three  definite  systems,  one  must 
then  immediately  be  widely  strengthened 
and  extended,  the  other  two  re-created.  In 
the  beginning  the  Benedictine,  Franciscan, 
and  Dominican  rules  should  be  accepted 
practically  in  their  integrity.  Experience 
will  indicate  necessary  changes  of  adapta- 
tion, but  there  is  none  now  who  seems  to 
possess  that  clear  vision  that  would  make 
possible  either  a  new  rule  or  the  series  of 
[23  ] 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

modifications  of  an  old  one  that  would  per- 
fectly meet  the  anomalous  conditions  of  our 
time.  Moreover  there  is  in  monasticism 
something  akin  to  the  Apostolical  Succes- 
sion which  alone  guarantees  a  valid  priest- 
hood, and  this  identity  of  motive  and  conti- 
nuity of  tradition  must  be  preserved.  Every 
Religious  since  the  sixth  century  has  traced 
his  lineage  and  his  "mission"  back  to  St. 
Benedict,  and  so  it  must  always  be. 
Gathered  together  under  his  patronage, 
and  that  of  his  successors,  clear  direction 
will  be  given  as  to  the  lines  along  which  the 
necessary  modification  must  proceed. 

One  may  admit,  and  frankly,  that  the 
obstacles  that  stand  in  the  way  of  this  res- 
toration and  revival  seem  almost  insuper- 
able. They  are  not  this,  but  only  stimulating 
to  a  degree.  Hitherto,  when  the  need  arose, 
some  one  man  came  forward,  out  of  ob- 
livion, to  stir  the  world  and  gather  together 
the  necessary  soldiers  in  God's  new  army. 
St.  Benedict,  St.  Berno,  St.  Robert  of 
Molesmes,  St.  Stephen  Harding,  Chrode- 
gang  of  Metz,  St.  Bernard,  St.  Bruno,  St. 
Francis,  St.  Dominic,  St.  Ignatius  Loyola, 
all  were  sudden  and  shining  lights,  vivid 
and  dominant  personalities  filled  with  the 
[24] 


MONASTICISM  AND  WORLD   CRISIS 

Spirit  of  God,  who  had  the  vision,  the 
power  to  interpret  it,  and  the  faculty  of 
inspiring  and  leading  men;  and  the  same  is 
true  down  even  to  our  own  day,  in  the  per- 
sons of  Father  Benson,  and  Dom  Aelred  Car- 
lyle,  and  Father  Huntington.  Under  them 
the  task  was  easy  of  accomplishment,  but 
now  we  confront  a  new  situation  where  there 
are  no  precedents  to  guide  us.  The  War  is  a 
great  wonder  and  prolific  of  many  revela- 
tions, but  none  is  more  staggering  than  this : 
that  now,  at  a  moment  when  the  world  cries 
aloud  for  leadership  as  never  before,  there 
is  none  to  answer.  In  no  land,  among  no 
people,  in  no  category  of  life,  is  there  to  be 
found  today  one  leader  of  the  first  class; 
not  a  statesman,  not  a  philosopher,  hardly 
even  a  soldier,  and  with  the  exception  of 
the  Cardinal  of  Malines  and  certain  of  the 
French  bishops,  not  a  Churchman  of  the 
first  class,  to  see,  to  interpret,  to  arouse  or 
to  lead.  In  these  latter  days  modernism  — 
largely  through  its  basic  principles  of 
Protestantism,  secularism  and  democracy  — 
has  reduced  all  men  to  a  dead  level  of  in- 
feriority, from  which  no  heroic  leader  lifts 
his  head. 

In  some  way,  then,  we  must  find  a  sub- 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

stitute  for  the  great  creators  of  Christian 
monasticism,  since  modern  civilization  has 
reached  a  point  where  leaders  are  no  longer 
produced.  The  dangers  that  follow  from 
this  lack  of  leadership  are  deep-seated  and 
sinister.  Father  Benson  used  to  say  that  he 
had  known  few  men  with  a  vocation  to  be 
monks,  but  many  with  a  vocation  to  be 
Fathers  Superior.  The  danger  of  mistaken 
leadership,  or  of  joint  action  without  leader- 
ship, are  very  great.  It  takes  several  years 
to  test  a  vocation,  and  many  years  to  make  a 
monk.  Obedience  is  even  a  harder  rule  to 
follow  than  either  poverty  or  chastity,  and 
training  is  as  necessary  for  a  monk  or  friar 
as  for  an  engineer  or  a  physician.  I  see  no 
alternative  but  for  the  tested  Orders  we 
have,  such  as  the  S.  S.  J.  E.  and  Holy  Cross, 
largely  to  abandon  their  other  work  in 
order  that  they  may  receive  into  their  no- 
vitiates the  men  who  may  be  drawn  towards 
the  Religious  Life,  to  test  and  train  them 
even  for  other  h'ouses  and  other  possible 
Rules  than  their  own.  Could  they  do  this, 
could  they  make  this  sacrifice,  they  might 
become  the  nurseries  of  a  complete  and 
saving  system  of  monasticism.  Another 
possibility  would  be  the  organization  of  the 
[  26] 


MONASTICISM  AND  WORLD   CRISIS 

diocesan  monasteries  of  canons-regular 
of  which  I  have  spoken,  the  prior  in  each 
case  being  at  first  novice-master  as  well,  and 
a  trained  Religious  loaned  for  a  few  years 
for  this  particular  work.  One  warning  can- 
not be  too  often  reiterated,  which  is  that  the 
certain  road  to  failure  lies  through  a  group 
of  earnest  and  zealous  men  banding  to- 
gether to  form  a  religious  community,  with- 
out disciplinary  experience,  and  intent  only 
on  creating  a  centre  of  monastic  life  out  of 
their  own  inner  consciousness.  We  have 
had  rather  too  much  of  this  of  late,  and  the 
experiment  must  not  be  repeated. 

So,  then,  we  must  begin  by  strengthening 
the  S.  S.J.E.  and  Holy  Cross  and  at  the 
same  time  restoring  true  monasticism 
through  a  revived  Benedictinism,  and  the 
orders  of  Franciscan  and  Dominican 
preaching  friars.  I  am  increasingly  con- 
vinced that  the  work  will  not  and  must  not 
stop  here.  The  old  rules  must  be  amended 
and  developed  for  new  orders,  but  the  time 
has  come  for  a  further  extension  of  the 
monastic  idea.  In  the  beginning,  in  the  time 
of  Pachomius  and  the  hermits  of  the  desert, 
the  unit  was  the  individual,  wholly  with- 
drawn from  the  world  and  isolated  in  his 
[27] 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

mountain  cave,  or  on  the  top  of  his  column 
if  his  taste  led  in  that  direction.  St.  Bene- 
dict increased  this  unit  through  exalting  the 
idea  of  human  fellowship,  and  thereafter  it 
consisted  of  groups,  either  of  men  or  women, 
forming  a  centralized  community.  Then 
St.  Ignatius  Loyola  increased  the  size  of 
these  groups,  giving  them  the  centralized 
control  of  an  army.  Now  the  time  has  come 
for  a  further  extension  of  the  great  idea,  not 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  monastic  unit  or  of 
the  individual  unit,  but  to  supplement 
them.  This  new  unit  will  be  the  family, 
men,  women  and  children,  in  that  most  holy 
unit  of  all  which  is  the  Christian  family, 
gathering  together  in  places  withdrawn 
from  the  world  ( as  the  world  is  now,  and  has 
been  for  nearly  five  centuries),  where  they 
can  build  up  what  I  like  to  call  "walled 
towns,"  —  no  more  of  the  world  than  is  the 
monastery,  but  like  that  constituted  on  lines 
of  order,  simplicity  and  righteousness. 
The  headlong  development  of  modernism 
has  at  last  resulted  in  a  social  organism 
which  is  identical  in  all  parts  of  the  world 
and  apparently  invincible  and  irreformable 
—  at  all  events  of  its  own  motion  or  from 
within.  In  the  current  effort  of  one  section 
[  28  ] 


MONASTICISM  AND   WORLD   CRISIS 

of  this  organism  to  establish  by  force  and 
the  denial  of  the  last  traces  of  an  earlier 
Christian  society  its  hegemony  of  the  globe, 
the  whole  thing  may  be  destroyed,  as  com- 
pletely as  Antiquity  was  destroyed,  and  be- 
fore the  end  of  the  century  we  may  be  ek- 
ing out  a  precarious  and  savage  existence 
amid  the  crumbling  ruins  of  a  proud  civil- 
ization that  has  passed  away.  The  chances 
are  that  this  is  the  fate  in  store  for  the 
world,  which  is  very  given  to  "  vain  repeti- 
tions " ;  but  if  for  the  moment  this  catastro- 
phe is  delayed,  as  Rome  sporadically  re- 
vived in  a  measure,  and  with  failing  vigour, 
between  the  successive  barbarian  invasions, 
then  the  immediate  question  will  be,  What 
course  are  they  to  pursue  who  have  read  the 
writing  on  the  wall  and  have  seen  the  pres- 
ent phantasm  of  culture  only  as  a  silly 
mockery,  incapable  of  self-regeneration?  If 
after  this  war  there  is  an  interlude  of  com- 
placent recovery  in  preparation  for  the  next 
and  more  devastating  visitation;  if  some 
imbecile  return  is  made  towards  the  status 
quo  ante,  with  secularism  rampant  in  edu- 
cation and  Dr.  Flexner  perhaps  "  Dictator 
of  Studies" ;  with  the  present  smug  and  cyni- 
cal substitute  for  democracy  rampant  and 
[  29] 


unashamed ;  with  raw  heresy  masquerading 
under  the  name  of  "  fraternal  co-operation  " 
and  "  glorious  comprehensiveness " ;  with 
industrialism  working  again  towards  the 
final  establishment  of  the  Servile  State; 
with  a  pseudo-evolutionary  pseudo-philoso- 
phy salving  the  surface  wounds  of  a  van- 
ishing conscience  and  feeding  vanity  with 
the  pabulum  of  fatuous  flattery;  with  public 
opinion  and  newspapers  and  automobiles 
and  victrolas  and  airplanes  and  movies  and 
"  great  white  ways,"  and  billionaires  and 
war  babies  and  pacifism  and  social-service 
crusades  and  world  conferences  on  unfaith 
and  disorder,  —  together  with  all  the  myr- 
iad other  engaging  manifestations  of  the 
era  of  enlightenment  that  succeeded  the 
Christian  Commonwealth  of  the  Middle 
Ages  —  what  are  we  to  do? 

Frankly,  I  think  there  is  nothing  but  a 
raising  of  the  cry  "To  your  tents,  O  Israel !" 
and  a  retreat  to  the  walled  towns,  that  will 
be  the  new  sanctuaries  of  those  who  are  too 
proud  to  bend  the  knee  to  Baal:  to  volun- 
tary "  concentration  camps,"  each  of  which 
would  be  a  little  imperium  in  imperio, 
an  oasis  of  self-restraint  in  a  desert  of  self- 
indulgence,  where  once  more  religion  be- 
[  30] 


MONASTICISM  AND  WORLD   CRISIS 

comes  something  besides  a  social  amenity 
and  interpenetrates  all  life  until  again  the 
bad  division  between  Church  and  State  is 
altogether  lost.  It  is  only  in  such  communi- 
ties that  the  human  scale  can  be  regained, 
and  until  this  replaces  the  imperialism  that 
now  dominates  all  action  and  all  thought, 
it  is  useless  to  talk  about  civilization  as  a 
thing  which  has  any  contemporary  exist- 
ence. Of  course,  each  walled  town  would 
contain  its  twin  kernel  of  life  in  the  shape 
of  a  parish  church  and  a  monastery,  the 
latter  term  covering  houses  both  for  men 
and  women;  therefore,  even  with  this  ex- 
tension of  the  monastic  idea,  we  shall  need 
our  cloisters  of  the  olden  type,  and  even 
more  than  otherwise.  Of  course,  few  of  us 
have  or  will  have  the  vocation  to  the  Re- 
ligious Life,  and  we  shall  need  to  preserve 
and  restore  the  old  and  holy  institution  of 
the  family.  Therefore,  if  we  are  to  be 
driven  out,  not  into,  but  from,  the  wilder- 
ness man  has  made  with  his  clever  hands 
and  cleverer  brain,  we  must  have  our  walled 
towns;  but  these  can  assemble  better  around 
the  walls  of  some  religious  house  than  they 
can  be  created  by  fiat,  while  itself  must  be 
always  the  centre  of  spiritual  energy  and 
[31  ] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

the  final  refuge  of  those  who  have  become 
weary  of  living  even  in  the  paradisaical 
peace  of  a  walled  town. 

From  every  point  of  view  the  restoration 
and  expansion  of  the  consecrated  Religious 
Life  is  the  demand  most  clamorous  today. 
Not  that  it  may  supersede  the  secular  priest- 
hood, but  supplement  and  strengthen  it;  not 
that  it  may  hold  up  an  ideal  of  asceticism  in 
place  of  that  forever  consecrated  by  the 
Holy  Family  of  Nazareth,  but  by  its  own 
voluntary  self-sacrifice,  make  the  human 
family  more  secure  in  its  place;  not  that  it 
may  destroy  but  that  it  may  fulfil. 

Five  centuries  ago,  and  a  thousand,  and 
fifteen  hundred,  and  two  thousand,  the 
world  in  its  periodical  agony  called  aloud 
for  aid,  and  men  put  all  behind  them  and 
answered,  in  conformity  with  the  will  of 
our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  Who 
first,  for  the  saving  of  the  world,  voluntarily 
established  for  Himself  and  for  those  who 
would  follow  Him,  the  threefold  vows 
of  Poverty,  Chastity  and  Obedience  and 
added  for  full  measure,  Brotherhood  and 
Work.  Again  the  same  call  goes  forth, 
and  now,  or  later,  the  same  answer  must 
be  made  and  will  be  made.  If  to  any 
[32] 


MONASTICISM  AND  WORLD  CRISIS 

of  you  the  call  has  ever  come,  "  Sell  that 
thou  hast;  take  up  thy  cross  and  follow  Me," 
he  must  make  sure  of  two  things:  first,  that 
the  call  is  indeed  of  God ;  and  second,  that 
even  at  the  price  of  life  itself,  it  does  not 
go  unheeded. 


[33l 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND 
THE  FUTURE 

SACRAMENTALISM  is  the  Divine  law  of 
life  and  therefore  it  is  the  essential 
element,  of  the  very  esse  of  Catholic 
faith    and    Catholic    philosophy,    securing 
them  in  absolute  isolation  from  all  ethnic 
religions  and  the  many  inventions  of  man- 
made  philosophies. 

Here  is  the  definition  of  a  sacrament  by 
the  greatest  expositor  of  sacramental  phi- 
losophy, Hugh  of  St.  Victor:  "The  sacra- 
ment is  the  corporal  or  material  element 
set  out  sensibly,  representing  from  its  simili- 
tude, signifying  from  its  institution,  and 
containing  from  its  sanctification,  some 
invisible  and  spiritual  grace."  Then  the 
greatest  pure  intellect,  St.  Thomas  Aquinas, 
proceeds,  in  speaking  of  the  Holy  Sacra- 
ment of  the  Altar:  "All  the  other  sacra- 
ments seem  to  be  ordained  to  this  one  as 
to  their  end,  for  it  is  manifest  that  the 
sacrament  of  Order  is  ordained  to  the  con- 
secration of  the  Eucharist;  and  the  sacra- 
[34] 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE   FUTURE 

ment  of  Baptism  to  the  reception  of  the 
Eucharist;  while  a  man  is  perfected  by 
Confirmation  so  as  not  to  fear  to  abstain 
from  this  sacrament.  By  Penance  and  Ex- 
treme Unction,  man  is  prepared  to  receive 
the  Body  of  Christ  worthily,  and  Matri- 
mony, at  least  in  its  signification,  touches 
this  sacrament;  in  so  far  as  it  signifies  the 
union  of  Christ  and  the  Church,  of  which 
union  the  Eucharist  is  a  figure." 

As,  from  the  creation  of  the  world,  it  has 
been  a  world  of  sacraments,  so,  from  Pen- 
tecost, the  Church  has  worked  in  and  by 
the  Seven  Sacraments;  it  would  be  almost 
possible  to  say  that  the  Church  has  existed 
for  its  sacraments,  since  these  are  the  means 
ordained  by  God  for  particularizing  the 
Redemption  of  Calvary  in  the  person  of 
every  man,  reconciling  to  Himself  each 
who  will  and  redeeming  him  from  that 
slavery  to  matter  in  which  he  was  bound 
through  his  inheritance.  There  is  no 
Church  without  the  sacraments.  The  apos- 
tolic ministry  itself  is  ordered  and  per- 
petuated simply  as  the  means  of  preserving 
the  validity  of  the  sacraments  of  Penance 
and  of  the  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ,  and 
as  St.  Thomas  has  said,  even  Penance  is  a 
[35  I 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

means  towards  the  Holy  Sacrament  of  the 
Altar  which  is  "  the  end  and  aim  of  all  the 
sacraments," 

I  conceive  that  the  time  has  come  for  us 
to  take  thought  of  the  bearing  of  this  on  the 
question  of  our  relationship  to  those,  out- 
side the  communion  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
who  deny  the  sacraments  as  such,  accepting 
conditionally  two  of  them  only,  and  these 
simply  as  symbols  or  commemorative  cere- 
monies. I  conceive,  also,  that  this  scrutiny 
should  extend  to  more  intimate  circles  of 
affiliation.  The  famous  Lambeth  "Quadri- 
lateral" is  fatally  weak  in  that  it  imposes 
the  fact  of  the  Apostolic  Ministry  without 
reference  to  its  significance  and  its  reason 
for  being.  What  excuse  has  it  except  that 
it  ensures  the  making  of  priests  who  can 
administer  the  sacrament  of  Penance,  act  as 
the  agencies  for  the  performing  of  the 
Divine  miracle  in  Holy  Mass;  offer  the 
very  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ  a  Sacrifice 
before  God,  and  to  these  ends  ensure  the 
unbroken  continuance  of  a  Catholic  priest- 
hood until  the  end  of  time. 

Acceptance  of  the  threefold  ministry, 
and  of  the  fact  of  Apostolic  succession 
through  the  laying  on  of  hands  on  the  part 
[36] 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE  FUTURE 

of  those  who  claim  this  tactual  succession, 
if  it  did  not  carry  with  it  a  true  acceptance 
of  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  the  nature,  and 
efficacy,  and  mode  of  operation  of  the 
Seven  Sacraments,  would  be  but  a  still  fur- 
ther extension  of  heresy  closely  approach- 
ing sacrilege.  What  we  who  are  Catholics 
want  and  work  for  and  pray  for  is  unity  in 
faith  and  belief  even  if  there  is  some  diver- 
sity in  practice.  We  have  come  to  the 
parting  of  the  ways  and  can  no  longer 
follow  a  path  that  has  led  to  substantial 
unity  of  practice  with  unlimited  diversity 
in  belief. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  we  can  take  no 
further  interest  in  an  empty  conformity; 
that  the  "glorious  comprehensiveness"  of 
last-century  apologetic  leaves  us  cold,  and 
that  at  last  we  are  coming  to  consider 
whether  it  is  possible  for  any  portion  of  the 
Church  to  remain  longer  half  Protestant 
and  half  Catholic,  mingled  indifferently  of 
those  who  accept  and  those  who  deny  the 
Catholic  doctrine  of  the  sacraments.  It  is 
here  that  the  line  of  demarcation  exists;  not 
between  those  who  maintain  the  form  of  the 
threefold  ministry  and  those  who  prefer 
the  congregational  polity;  not  between  the 
[37] 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

adherents  of  a  more  or  less  historical  liturgy 
and  those  who  take  unto  themselves  many 
inventions  of  curious  and  novel  ritual ;  not 
between  the  Protestant  Episcopalian  and 
the  Protestant  Congregationalist  whatever 
his  sect  and  name,  but  between  those  who, 
on  the  one  hand,  accept  the  dogma  and 
philosophy  of  sacramentalism,  with  the 
Seven  Sacraments  in  their  entirety,  and 
the  supreme  sacrament  of  Holy  Mass  as 
the  crown  and  consummation  of  all ;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  those  who  reject  the  sacra- 
ment of  Penance,  turn  the  sacrament  of 
Matrimony  into  a  civil  contract,  ignore  the 
sacraments  of  Confirmation  and  Unction, 
and  recognize  in  the  Sacrament  of  the  Altar 
neither  Sacrifice  nor  Real  Presence,  but 
only  a  symbolical  commemoration  of  a  fait 
accompli. 

The  division  lies  here  and  it  is  impassi- 
ble. On  the  one  hand  lies  Protestantism, 
on  the  other,  Catholicism,  and  the  two  can 
never  mix.  On  the  one  hand  is  that  vast 
body  of  men  in  communion  with  the  Apos- 
tolic See  of  Rome,  the  heterogeneous,  if 
not  heterodox,  units  of  the  fast  crumbling 
Eastern  Church,  and  —  ourselves.  On  the 
other,  all  the  one  hundred  and  fifty-seven 

[  38  1 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE   FUTURE 

varieties  of  sects,  together  with  a  probable 
majority  of  the  bishops,  clergy  and  people 
of  the  Anglican  and  the  Protestant  Epis- 
copal Churches.  The  line  of  cleavage  lies 
here  and  not  elsewhere,  and  nothing  is 
gained  by  a  denial  of  the  fact. 

It  is  not  along  this  line,  however,  that  I 
wish  to  speak;  the  place  of  the  sacraments 
in  Catholic  Christianity,  their  essential 
nature,  the  supreme  significance  of  the 
Sacrament  of  the  Altar  and  its  unique 
value  devotionally,  are  all,  for  us,  matters 
of  common  knowledge  and  need  no  argu- 
ment. That,  as  St.  Thomas  says,  "  this 
sacrament  is  the  end  and  consummation  of 
all  the  sacraments,"  we  know,  but  I  do 
not  think  we  sufficiently  realize  that 
behind  lies  a  great,  a  complete  system  of 
philosophy,  developed  by,  or  revealed 
through,  supreme  exponents  of  Christian 
thought;  a  philosophy  that  underlies  all  the 
great  Christian  centuries,  explaining  their 
achievements,  revealing  their  quality,  mak- 
ing manifest  their  singularity  in  human  life. 
A  philosophy  that  is  also  a  sufficient  ex- 
position of  the  universe,  and  that  has  been 
rejected  through  the  last  five-century  epoch 
of  modernism  in  favour  of  a  materialistic 
[39] 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND   MYRRH 

system  called  Evolution,  with  the  result  we 
see  before  us  in  the  progressive  collapse, 
in  horror,  in  ignominy  and  dishonour,  of 
what  we  have  called  modern  civilization. 
In  an  absolutely  real  sense  it  is  possible  to 
say  that  the  rejection  of  sacramentalism 
and  of  the  Catholic  sacraments,  in  philoso- 
phy and  religion,  is  the  root  cause  of  the 
war.  And  the  corollary  follows  close  upon ; 
that  is  to  say,  it  is  only  through  the  abandon- 
ment of  evolutionary  philosophy  and  a  re- 
turn, in  spirit  and  in  act,  to  an  explicit  and 
inclusive  sacramentalism,  that  we  can  look 
for  the  energizing  force  that  will  enable 
us  to  build  up  a  new  world  on  the  wide 
ruins  of  a  great  failure. 

I  would  not  minimize  the  great  work  we 
have  to  do  in  bringing  Ecclesia  Anglicana 
to  recognize,  accept  and  avow  Holy  Mass 
as  the  central,  supreme  and  unique  Opus 
Dei  in  her  visible  life  and  action;  this  can- 
not be  too  strongly  emphasized,  nor  the 
equal  duty  in  bringing  again  explicit  rec- 
ognition of  the  Mass  as  Sacrifice  as  well  as 
Communion.  The  two  things  where  effort 
should  now  be  centred  are,  I  believe,  the 
establishing  of  Reservation  as  the  standard 
practice  in  all  churches,  and  the  preaching 
[40] 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE  FUTURE 

of  the  Sacrifice  of  the  Mass.  Reservation 
by  Episcopal  tolerance,  either  as  the  result 
of  good  nature,  indifference,  or  the  working 
of  "the  principle  of  comprehensiveness,"  is 
unworthy  and  hardly  to  be  tolerated  except 
faute  de  mieux.  I  am  not  sure  that  the  en- 
forcing of  the  doctrine  of  the  Eucharistic 
Sacrifice  is  not  more  important.  Both  work 
towards  establishing  the  Real  Presence  of 
Christ  in  the  Sacrament,  and  this  is  funda- 
mental both  from  the  standpoint  of  religion 
and  of  philosophy.  St.  Augustine  has  said : 
"  Christ  was  sacrificed  once  in  Himself, 
and  yet  He  is  sacrificed  daily  in  the  Sacra- 
ment," and  St.  Thomas,  with  that  splendid 
lucidity  that  makes  him  "  Doctor  Angeli- 
cus,"  "This  Sacrament  is  both  a  sacrifice 
and  a  sacrament;  it  has  the  nature  of  a  sac- 
rifice inasmuch  as  it  is  offered  up,  and  it 
has  the  nature  of  a  sacrament  inasmuch  as 
it  is  received.  And  therefore  it  has  the 
effect  of  a  sacrament  in  the  recipient  and 
the  effect  of  a  sacrifice  in  the  offerer,  or  in 
them  for  whom  it  is  offered." 

Sacrament  and  Sacrifice,  the  two  great 

realities  the  world  had  cast  away  during 

that  era  that  is  now  coming  to  its  unhonoured 

end  through  such  a  cataclysm  as  has  not 

[41  1 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

happened  since  the  fall  of  Rome.  Through 
the  Great  Purgation  of  War  and  the  univer- 
sal testing  of  souls,  the  reality  of  sacrifice 
is  coming  back  to  a  world  that  thought  it 
could  do  without,  but  the  reality  of  sacra- 
mentalism  is  still  far  from  the  minds  of 
men.  Still  the  world  is  enmeshed  in  the 
tangled  web  of  a  false  philosophy;  deep  in 
the  morass  of  dull  materialism  it  struggles 
vainly,  led  to  its  betrayal  by  the  ignis  fatuus 
of  an  iridescent  intellectualism.  From 
this  nemesis  it  must  be  saved  if  a  new  Dark 
Ages  is  to  be  avoided. 

Let  me  quote  again  from  Hugh  of  St. 
Victor,  a  great  philosopher  of  the  twelfth 
century,  one  who  is  little  known  but  who  is, 
I  think,  not  only  the  perfect  expositor  of 
sacramentalism,  but  as  great  a  philosopher 
under  Christianity  as  Plato  under  paganism : 

"  There  was  a  certain  wisdom  that  seemed 
such  to  them  that  knew  not  the  true  wisdom. 
The  world  found  it  and  began  to  be  puffed 
up,  thinking  itself  great  in  this.  Confid- 
ing in  its  wisdom  it  became  presumptu- 
ous and  boasted  it  would  attain  the  highest 
wisdom.  And  it  made  itself  a  ladder  of 
the  face  of  creation.  .  .  .  Then  those  things 
which  were  seen  were  known,  and  there 
[42! 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE  FUTURE 

were  other  things  which  were  not  known; 
and  through  those  which  were  manifest 
they  expected  to  reach  those  that  were 
hidden.  And  they  stumbled  and  fell  into 
the  falsehoods  of  their  own  imagining. 
...  So  God  made  foolish  the  wisdom  of 
this  world;  and  He  pointed  out  another 
wisdom,  which  seemed  foolishness  and  was 
not.  For  it  preached  Christ  crucified,  in 
order  that  truth  might  be  sought  in  hu- 
mility. But  the  world  despised  it,  wishing 
to  contemplate  the  works  of  God,  which  He 
had  made  a  source  of  wonder,  and  it  did 
not  wish  to  venerate  what  He  had  set  for 
imitation,  neither  did  it  look  to  its  own 
disease,  seeking  medicine  in  piety;  but  pre- 
suming on  a  false  health,  it  gave  itself  over 
with  vain  curiosity  to  the  study  of  alien 
things." 

I  know  not  if  there  is  anywhere  a  better 
description  than  this,  of  our  own  world  of 
modernism  that  reached  the  summit  of  its 
ascending  curve  in  the  first  decade  of  the 
present  century.  For  four  hundred  years  it 
had  been  progressively  abandoning  that 
sacramental  idea  that  progressively  had 
grown  during  the  fifteen  antecedent  cen- 
turies under  that  constant  and  cumulative 
[43] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

revelation  that  was  promised  and  given  to 
the  Catholic  Church.  So  in  the  end  the 
world  "stumbled  and  fell  into  the  falsehoods 
of  its  own  imagining,"  until  "  God  made 
foolish  the  wisdom  of  this  world  "  by  per- 
mitting it  to  develop  its  logical  conclusion 
in  world  war  and  irremediable  ruin. 

Any  future  of  decency  and  righteousness 
must  be  based  on  a  renunciation  of  "  the 
wisdom  of  this  world,"  which  is  material- 
ism substantiated  by  the  heresy  of  Evolu- 
tion ;  so  much  of  the  Church  as  has  adhered 
to  sacramentalism,  or  recovered  it  after  the 
episode  of  the  Reformation,  holds  in  its 
hands  the  keys  to  this  future,  and  it  will  be 
largely,  if  not  primarily,  through  the  rein- 
forcement of  sacramentalism  that  the  future 
may  be  assured.  For  us  then,  and  for  all 
Catholics,  devotion  to  the  Holy  Sacrament 
of  the  Altar  opens  out  into  something  far 
more  than  doctrine  and  worship;  into  the 
very  philosophy  and  way  of  thought  and 
mode  of  life  that  must  condition  society 
after  the  war. 

We  hear  much  of  a  new  knowledge  of 
Medievalism  and  of  a  Mediaeval  revival. 
This  is  far  more  than  a  question  of  archi- 
tectural style,  more  than  an  escape  from 

[44] 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE  FUTURE 

contemporary  imperialism  into  the  free 
democracy  of  the  Middle  Ages,  more  than 
a  restoration  of  the  Mediaeval  industrial 
system.  It  is  in  effect  a  return  to  the  re- 
ligion and  the  philosophy  of  the  Catholic 
ages  which  made  possible  Gothic  art  and 
the  guild  system  and  the  social  unit  of 
human  scale. 

The  world  is  ready  for  the  great  return. 
In  four  years  war  has  shattered  the  whole 
brummagem  fabric  of  modernism.  In- 
dustrial civilization,  imperial  nationalism, 
industry  and  finance,  the  intellectual  cri- 
terion, automatic  evolution,  the  omnipo- 
tence of  education  and  environment,  the 
possibility  of  earthly  perfectibility  for  man, 
all  have  gone  on  the  pyre  of  great  burning, 
and  only  the  penitential  ashes  remain.  At 
the  very  moment  when  the  whole  world  ac- 
claimed triumphant  modernism  as  victor 
over  the  slaughtered  superstitions  of  the 
past,  behold  a  great  wonder;  the  casting 
down  into  the  dust  of  the  idols  of  brass  and 
the  naked  showing  of  the  clumsy  feet  of 
clay;  yea,  the  world  is  ready,  and  more  than 
ready,  and  the  proclamation  of  old  truth, 
long  forgotten,  will  not  fall  on  deaf  ears. 

The  whole  world  is  sacramental,  and  the 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

Seven  of  the  Catholic  Church  are  but  the 
sign  and  symbol  of  the  Universe.  Let  me 
quote  again  from  Hugh  of  St.  Victor. 
"  God  set  for  man  as  a  sign  the  sacraments 
of  his  salvation,  in  order  that  whosoever 
would  apprehend  them  with  right  faith  and 
firm  hope  might,  though  under  the  yoke, 
have  some  fellowship  with  freedom.  .  .  . 
For  as  there  is  body  and  soul  in  man,  and  in 
Scripture  the  letter  and  the  sense,  so  in 
every  sacrament  there  is  a  visible  external 
which  may  be  handled  and  the  invisible 
within  which  is  believed  and  taught."  And 
finally  "The  spirit  was  created  for  God's 
sake;  the  body  for  the  spirit's  sake,  and  the 
world  for  the  body's  sake,  so  that  the  spirit 
might  be  subject  to  God,  the  body  to  the 
spirit,  and  the  world  to  the  body." 

Let  us  go  on  from  this.  Life  as  we  know 
it,  the  life  of  this  world,  is  the  union  of 
matter  and  spirit;  and  matter  is  not  spirit, 
nor  spirit  matter,  nor  is  one  a  mode  of  the 
other  but  they  are  two  different  creatures. 
Severance  of  matter  and  spirit,  of  body  and 
soul,  is  death.  That  ancient  heresy  that 
matter  is  a  figment  of  fancy,  is  re-vamped 
in  these  latter  days  for  the  wonder  of  delec- 
tation of  disillusioned  Protestants.  It  is 
[46] 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE   FUTURE 

a  symbol  of  death.  That  modern  heresy 
ingeniously  devised  for  the  infidel  and  the 
materialist,  that  spirit  is  only  a  mode  of 
matter  automatically  evolved  through  bio- 
logical processes,  is  also  a  symbol  of  death, 
if  it  is  not  death  itself,  or  perhaps  that  awful 
and  mysterious  thing,  "  the  sin  against  the 
Holy  Ghost."  Materialism  on  the  one 
hand,  transcendentalism  on  the  other,  when 
carried  to  their  logical  conclusion,  are 
denial  of  the  law  of  life.  All  the  world  is 
but  the  redemption  and  transfiguring  of 
matter  through  the  interpenetration  and 
the  indwelling  of  spirit.  We  cannot  know 
spirit  except  through  the  accidents  of  mat- 
ter; we  may  not  know  matter  except  as  it  is 
irradiated  by  spirit.  Says  St.  Thomas, 
"  Human  nature  is  such  it  has  to  be  led  by 
things  corporeal  and  sensible  to  things 
spiritual  and  intangible,"  and  that  con- 
temporary but  unconscious  follower  of 
Aquinas,  Henri  Bergson,  echoes  him  when 
he  says,  "The  intellect  is  characterized  by 
a  natural  inability  to  comprehend  life" 
"for — we  cannot  too  often  repeat  it  —  in- 
telligence and  instinct  are  turned  in  opposite 
directions,  the  former  towards  inert  matter, 
the  latter  towards  life.  Intelligence  by 
[47] 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND   MYRRH 

means  of  science,  which  is  its  work,  will 
deliver  up  to  us  more  and  more  completely 
the  secret  of  physical  operation;  of  life  it 
brings  us,  and  moreover  only  claims  to 
bring  us,  a  translation  in  terms  of  inertia." 
"Intuition"  (a  term  chosen  by  Bergson  to 
express  what  Cardinal  Newman  called 
"  the  spiritual  power  of  assent,"  and  not  an 
altogether  happy  one)  is  alone  able  to 
afford  us,  through  material  mediumship, 
some  adumbration  of  the  infinite.  As  this 
great  modern  philosopher  has  said  with 
singular  clarity,  "  On  our  personality,  on 
our  liberty,  on  the  place  we  occupy  in  the 
whole  of  nature,  on  our  origin,  and  perhaps 
also  on  our  destiny,  it  throws  a  light  feeble 
and  vacillating,  but  it  none  the  less  pierces 
the  darkness  of  the  night  in  which  the  in- 
tellect leaves  us."  Seers  and  prophets  and 
the  greatest  of  artists  are  indeed  so  closely 
in  touch  at  times  with  pure  spirit  that  they 
seem  absolved  from  the  necessities  of  or- 
dinary men,  receiving  inspiration  directly 
and  without  the  intervention  of  material 
things,  but  this  relationship  is  unconscious; 
they  are  channels,  media,  for  the  outpour- 
ing of  Divine  grace  upon  others  than  them- 
selves. In  a  sense,  then,  they  become  the 
[48] 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE   FUTURE 

material  element  in  the  sacramental  union 
of  form  and  spirit.  Infrequently  appear 
men  and  women  who  in  the  state  of  ecstacy 
undeniably  transcend  human  limitations, 
becoming  for  the  moment  united  to  God 
after  a  mystical  fashion,  but  they  are  singu- 
lar episodes  well  without  the  common  lim- 
itations of  men.  For  man  as  man  the  fact 
remains,  that  as  he  is  compact  of  body  and 
soul  in  a  unity  only  dissolved  by  death,  so  for 
him  there  is  no  approach  to  the  Absolute  save 
through  the  mediumship  of  material  things. 
During  the  great  Christian  centuries  of 
the  Middle  Ages  this  fact  was  universally 
understood  and  accepted.  As  Mr.  Porter 
says  in  his  recent  book,  "  Beyond  Architect- 
ure," "To  the  mediaeval  mind  reality  was 
but  a  symbol  of  unreality,  matter  but  a  re- 
flection of  the  immaterial.  Our  earth 
became  only  a  shadow  of  Heaven."  Yes, 
but  by  symbolism  matter  became  glorified ; 
through  its  conjunction  with  spirit  it  be- 
came, as  does  the  body  of  man,  "  the  temple 
of  the  Holy  Ghost."  All  the  world  of  men 
and  women,  flowers  and  forests  and  kindly 
beasts,  of  changing  seasons  and  mysterious 
elemental  forces,  became  but  an  antitype 
of  the  Incarnation.  Gothic  art  of  every 

[491 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND   MYRRH 

sort  is  as  great  as  it  is  because  of  this.  What 
were  Reims  once,  and  Soissons,  before  their 
martyrdom,  but  the  transfiguring  of  stone 
and  metal  and  wood;  dead  matter  delved 
from  the  ground  or  hewn  out  of  the  forest, 
through  the  labour  of  man  exalted  into 
forms  of  absolute  beauty  that,  because  of 
this  loving  labour  had  been  transformed  into 
gifts  worthy  of  giving  back  to  God,  and  into 
a  mysterious  creation  that  in  the  words  of 
Abbot  Suger  of  St.  Denis  "was  neither 
wholly  of  earth  nor  wholly  of  Heaven  but 
a  mystical  blending  of  both,"  the  very  rev- 
elation to  men  of  that  which  was  beyond 
their  grasp  but  not  beyond  their  reach - 
the  Beatific  Vision  of  that  absolute  truth 
and  absolute  beauty  that  are  God  in  His 
Heaven.  It  is  no  accident  that  Gothic  art 
and  sacramental  philosophy  and  the  ex- 
altation of  the  Blessed  Sacrament  synchro- 
nized in  these  years  of  the  Middle  Ages,  for 
they  are  varied  manifestations  of  the  same 
thing.  It  is  no  accident  that  the  destruction 
of  Gothic  art  and  the  acceptance  of  a  ma- 
terialistic philosophy  and  denial  of  the  In- 
carnation have  synchronized  in  these  later 
years,  for  here  also  they  are  varied  mani- 
festations of  the  same  thing. 
[50] 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE  FUTURE 

Out  of  the  Renaissance  came  the  exalta- 
tion of  the  intellectual  test  and  standard; 
out  of  Protestantism  the  denial  of  the 
reality  of  the  sacraments  and  of  sacramen- 
talism.  The  revolutions  of  the  eighteenth 
and  nineteenth  centuries  enforced  the  new 
doctrines  and  spread  them  wide,  and  the  in- 
dustrial standards  and  methods  of  the  last 
century  have  finally  separated  spirit  from 
matter,  cast  it  out  into  the  limbo  of  ex- 
ploded superstitions,  and  left  only  dead 
matter  for  our  desire  and  acceptance  — 
money,  material  advantage  and  force. 

We  look  with  disgust  on  the  hedonistic 
revels  of  a  dying  Roman  Imperialism;  we 
turn  in  offence  from  the  sordid  corruption 
of  the  last  years  of  the  Dark  Ages ;  we  hold 
up  to  scorn  and  derision  the  gross  licentious- 
ness of  Church  and  State  in  the  Italy  of  the 
fifteenth  century;  but  no  one  of  these 
epochs,  base  as  it  is,  records  a  lower  fall 
than  the  manners  and  methods  and  morals 
of  our  own  modernism  when  at  last  the 
severance  had  been  accomplished  and 
matter,  unregenerated  and  unredeemed, 
had  become  Lord  of  the  World,  material- 
ism its  sacrosanct  religion  and  its  law  of 
life. 

[Si] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

The  curse  of  this  great  apostacy  lay  over 
all  the  peoples  that  in  predominant  num- 
bers had  turned  from  the  Catholic  faith  and 
had  abandoned  sacramental  philosophy:  on 
England,  France,  America,  but  chiefest  of 
all  on  Germany,  for  there  the  process  had 
begun  and  there  it  had  reached  its  flower. 
Great  in  the  eyes  of  men  were  the  results 
achieved  through  this  comprehensive  apos- 
tacy; wealth  without  limit  (though  con- 
fined to  the  few)  ;  ingenious  and  amazing 
machines  myriad  in  number  and  endlessly 
turning  out  more  wealth ;  forces  of  nature 
harnessed  and  made  the  meek  bond-slaves 
of  men;  intellectual  capacity  raised  to  new 
levels  of  competence  and  capable  of  justify- 
ing anything  so  long  as  it  diverged  suf- 
ficiently from  ancient  and  once  honourable 
standards.  There  was  hardly  a  man  in  the 
spring  of  1914  who  would  have  denied  that 
modernism  had  gloriously  triumphed,  and 
only  a  scattered  few  who  doubted  its  eter- 
nity. Then  came  the  epic  catastrophe  when 
in  an  hour  the  card-castle  had  crumbled 
about  our  ears.  The  efficiency  of  material 
imperialism  swept  back  the  inefficiency  of 
an  imperialized  democracy,  and  so  it  has 
continued  for  four  years.  The  boasted  bar- 
[  52] 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE   FUTURE 

riers  against  war  or  dissolution,  erected  one 
behind  the  other  by  finance,  capitalism,  a 
socialistic  and  organized  proletariat,  uni- 
versal education,  popular  government,  in- 
tellectual and  spiritual  emancipation,  broke, 
toppled  and  dissolved,  forming  only  van- 
ishing and  impotent  ramparts  against  a 
triumphant  Force  released  from  all  bond- 
age to  moral  standards  and  spiritual  laws. 

What  this  has  meant  in  national  conduct 
on  the  part  of  the  thus  far  triumphant 
power,  in  broken  oaths  and  cynical  lying, 
in  sanctioned  savagery,  and  beastliness  that 
balks  the  most  morbid  imagination,  I  need 
not  rehearse;  it  is  part  of  the  history  of  all 
time.  We  have  been  told  that  all  this  is  the 
pathological  phenomenon  of  a  small  clan 
of  aristocratic  rulers,  and  that  the  people 
themselves,  the  good,  kmd,  Teutonic  peas- 
ants and  workmen,  have  no  part  therein, 
and  must  be  coddled  and  humoured  so  that 
they  may  be  encouraged  to  cast  off  the  alien 
and  official  incubus  under  which  they 
groan  in  heavy  bondage.  We  are  told,  but 
we  do  not  believe ;  for  during  the  last  three 
years  the  revelations  of  popular  character 
have  been  convincing,  and  we  know  that 
what  we  are  fighting  is  a  supreme  autoc- 
[53] 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND   MYRRH 

racy,  and  more:  it  is  a  homogeneous  group 
of  peoples,  and  more:  it  is  a  motive  and  a 
force  let  loose  in  the  world  that  reaches  its 
tentacles  out  into  all  nations,  and  that  must 
be  destroyed,  root  and  branch,  if  society  is  to 
survive,  and  such  civilization  as  we  have 
be  not  cut  off  by  a  new  Dark  Ages.  What 
it  is  they  mean,  among  the  people  them- 
selves, is  well  set  forth  in  a  very  recent  Ger- 
man newspaper,  where  it  is  said  (but  not 
for  foreign  consumption)  :  "  Fraud,  em- 
bezzlement, peculation,  deceit,  immorality, 
lust,  these  unhappily  are  the  characteris- 
tics of  German  domestic  life  of  the  present 
day.  .  .  .  Our  returning  victorious  warriors 
will  be  confronted  with  a  terrible  disillu- 
sionment, and  our  children  will  look  back 
on  these  years  as  a  time  of  rampant  barbar- 
ism, of  unchecked  criminality  and  utter 
absence  of  morals." 

It  is  to  this  that  the  new  philosophy 
and  the  non-religion  of  the  post-mediaeval 
epoch  have  led  us;  to  the  war  that  scourges 
the  whole  world,  to  a  break-down  of  moral 
sense  and  of  right  standards  that  make  such 
a  war,  its  antecedents  and  its  concomitants, 
a  possibility.  There  are  many  streams  of 
tendency  threading  the  last  four  centuries 

[54l 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND   THE   FUTURE 

that  have  brought  this  about,  but  we  can 
no  longer  escape  the  conviction  that  it 
is  through  Protestantism,  and  especially 
through  the  Protestant  denial  of  Catholic 
sacramentalism,  that  the  strongest  element 
finds  its  course. 

This  is  inevitably  the  case.  Through 
sacramentalism  we  see  the  sanctity  of  ma- 
terial things  through  their  function  as  a 
vehicle  of  the  spirit,  as  through  the  Incar- 
nation we  realize  the  sanctity  of  the  human 
body  that  is  its  dwelling-place.  There  is 
nothing  so  mean  that  it  may  not  take  on 
glory  through  the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost, 
nothing  that  cannot  serve  as  a  channel  of 
Divinity.  Through  sacramentalism  we  un- 
derstand how  all  this  finality  we  call  the 
Absolute  shines  to  us  in  symbol  through 
all  created  things,  so  that  only  by  their 
mediation  may  we  lay  hold  on  the  mystical 
vision  of  God.  Of  all  this  the  world,  as 
such,  has  known  nothing  during  the  last 
century.  Material  things  have  been  this 
and  no  more:  dead  lumps  and  clods,  from 
the  gold  that  has  become  the  one  desire  of 
man,  to  the  human  body  bought  and  sold  and 
outraged  as  utterly  as  under  black  African 
slavery.  The  spiritual  ideal  that  is  the  life 
[55] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

of  man,  isolated  from  its  material  symbol, 
has  ceased  to  manifest  itself,  and  is  there- 
fore denied  save  as  a  by-product  of  biologi- 
cal processes.  Even  the  pledged  word,  in 
itself  a  just  symbol,  even  a  "sacramental," 
has  been  degraded,  and  by  intellectual  proc- 
esses untouched  by  the  fire  of  spiritual  per- 
ception, has  been  proved  no  more  than  the 
evanescent  formula  of  a  discredited  epoch. 

There  are  two  alternatives,  sacramental- 
ism  or  materialism.  In  the  great  civiliza- 
tion of  the  Middle  Ages,  as  this  had  its 
flowering  and  in  a  sense  its  sacramental  ex- 
pression in  Reims  Cathedral  and  Soissons, 
we  may  see  what  the  one  leads  to;  in  the 
bestial  destruction  of  Reims  and  Soissons  — 
an  act  symbolical  in  itself  —  we  see  the 
significant  issue  of  the  other. 

It  would  be  an  interesting  task  to  take 
up  one  by  one  the  seven  sacraments  of 
Catholicism  and  show  how  each  has,  be- 
yond its  own  special  power,  a  great  signifi- 
cance for  us  at  this  black  and  portentous 
moment  of  the  world,  but  this  would  mean 
not  an  essay  but  a  volume.  Each  one  of  us 
can,  however,  make  his  own  application 
of  each  sacramental  verity — Baptism, 
Confirmation.  Penance,  Orders,  Matri- 
[56] 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE   FUTURE 

mony,  Unction,  and  the  Holy  Eucharist. 
Poignantly  and  perfectly  each  expresses 
some  vital  truth,  but  of  them  all  the  last, 
the  crown  and  consummation  of  all  the  sac- 
raments and  of  all  sacramentalism,  has  the 
most  sublime  significance.  Think  for  a 
moment  of  this  great  mystery:  the  bread 
and  wine  of  man's  natural  food  transformed 
in  a  moment  by  the  power  of  God  and  at 
the  hands  of  His  priest  into  the  very  Body 
and  Blood  of  the  Saviour  of  the  World,  to 
be  at  the  same  time  the  spiritual  food  of 
man  and  the  everlasting  Sacrifice  for  the 
sins  of  the  whole  world.  The  faith  that 
accepts  this,  even  though  it  were  universal, 
might  not  abolish  sin  or  avert  war,  for  man 
is  man  always  and  works  after  his  own  kind. 
It  'would  prevent  such  a  war  as  this,  and 
such  civilization  as  that  out  of  which  the 
war  came,  for  out  of  sacramental  faith  and 
practice  came  honour,  and  truth  and 
sacrifice. 

And  through  the  war  they  are  coming 
back.  The  perfidy  and  dishonour  of  the 
universal  enemy  rebuild  in  the  desperate 
crusaders  of  the  new  age,  honour  and  stead- 
fastness and  righteous  hate.  Out  of  the 
broken  oaths  and  the  cynical  duplicity  and 
[57] 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND   MYRRH 

cold  and  Machiavellian  craft  of  Teuton- 
ism  comes  a  new  sense  of  truth  and  justice 
for  those  who  are  aligned  against  it.  Into 
a  world  of  hedonism  and  self-indulgence 
and  gross  individualism  the  meaning  of 
sacrifice  returns  in  the  thunders  of  unex- 
ampled war,  and  men,  women,  children, 
in  the  trenches,  on  the  high  seas,  at  home, 
in  garden  and  workshop,  find  in  the  su- 
preme sacrifice  that  is  theirs  to  offer,  the 
revelation  of  their  own  souls. 

The  world  must  be  made  over  anew,  in 
every  big  and  every  little  thing;  made  over 
politically,  socially,  industrially,  economi- 
cally, educationally;  but  these  reforms, 
drastic  as  they  must  be,  well-intentioned  as 
they  may  be,  will  prove  only  mechanistic 
and  disappointing  devices,  doomed  to  follow 
in  the  long  sequence  of  nineteenth-century 
nostrums  and  panaceas,  unless  the  great 
fundamental  reform  is  achieved  in  the 
spirit,  impulse  and  vision  of  all  the  peoples 
of  the  world,  the  gaining  back  of  the  char- 
acter-quality that  can  make  success  to  come 
out  of  indifferent  means,  and  assure  to 
wise  measures  their  full  fruition:  and  this 
lies  in  the  sphere  of  what  we  call  religion 
and  philosophy. 

[  58] 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE   FUTURE 

We  may  honestly  strive  to  "make  the 
world  safe  for  democracy,"  to  guarantee 
the  self-determination  of  all  peoples,  to 
shake  off  from  the  throat  of  human  society 
the  clutching  fangs  of  imperial  finance  and 
Jewish  internationalism,  to  destroy  the  five- 
century-long  antithesis  between  capital  and 
labour;  we  may  strive  even  to  restore  in  all 
things  the  unit  of  human  scale  —  and  our 
labours  will  go  for  little  unless  we  can  gain 
again  the  unity  of  the  Catholic  Faith  and 
the  dynamic  force  of  sacramental,  which 
is  to  say  Christian,  philosophy. 

It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  future 
of  the  world  lies  with  those  who  unite  in  un- 
flinching devotion  to  the  Blessed  Sacrament 
as  verily  and  indeed  the  Communion  of 
the  true  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ,  and  as 
well  the  eternal  Sacrifice  offered  of  God  to 
God  for  the  sins  of  the  world,  and  equally 
for  the  quick  and  the  dead.  It  is  not  only  as 
a  solemn  and  supreme  method  of  devotion, 
it  is  not  merely  as  the  central,  unique  and 
essential  act  of  worship  no  other  device  of 
clever  ingenuity  can  supplant,  that  we  work 
and  pray  for  the  restoration  of  Holy  Mass 
to  its  Divinely  ordained  position;  it  is  be- 
cause it  is  the  crux  and  the  key  to  all  that 
[59] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

follows  after,  all  that  the  world  has  aban- 
doned to  its  grievous  peril,  and  that  must 
be  restored  if  it  is  to  continue.  Reunion 
and  unity  centre  around  this,  and  not  in 
"  World  Conferences  on  Faith  and  Order," 
"Lambeth  Quadrilaterals,"  or  half-hearted 
schemes  of  compromise  and  approximation. 
"  It  is  the  Mass  that  matters,"  and  this  once 
won  the  rest  is  easy.  And  this  is  true  of 
fields  far  beyond  that  of  religion  itself.  I 
repeat,  in  the  end  the  whole  solution  of  the 
world-crisis  lies  here,  and  if  by  a  miracle 
the  whole  world  were  to  wake  up  and  find 
itself  Catholic  in  the  sense  in  which  it  was 
Catholic  from  the  year  975  to  the  year  1305, 
the  future  would  hold  for  us  clear  assur- 
ance of  the  quick  evanishment  of  our 
crowding  problems  and  the  swift  achieve- 
ment of  a  new  era  of  righteous  life.  The 
miracle  may  be  wrought,  for  miracles  are 
now  the  only  things  on  which  we  can 
rationally  count  with  reasonable  assur- 
ance; but  we  cannot  act  on  that  assumption, 
and  therefore  we  are  bound  to  labour 
consistently,  if  desperately,  for  bringing 
about  the  acceptable  change  by  human 
means. 

In  so  fighting  it  is,   I  think,  necessary 
[  60  1 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE  FUTURE 

that  we  should  now  make  an  act  of  renun- 
ciation of  our  fear  of  words,  for  it  is  fear 
of  words  rather  than  of  things  that  has  left 
us  weak  and  has  paralysed  our  efforts.  The 
two  words  we  have  most  feared  are  Mass 
and  Sacrifice.  Let  us  fear  them  no  longer, 
but  use  them  frankly  as  avowing  our  honest 
faith.  Let  us  use  the  word  Mass  because 
it  is  a  symbol  of  that  unity  in  the  communion 
of  the  Apostolic  See  towards  which  we 
must  look  as  the  end  of  all  projects  of  re- 
union. Because  it  means  not  only  Com- 
munion but  also  Sacrifice,  and  therefore 
expresses  the  dual  nature  of  this  sacrament. 
Because  it  definitely  excludes  the  interpre- 
tation of  this  sacrament,  as  no  more  than 
a  symbolical  commemoration,  that  is  in- 
tolerable to  the  Catholic  Faith.  Let  us 
frankly  avow  our  adherence  to  the  historic 
doctrine  of  the  sacrificial  nature  of  this 
sacrament,  since  without  this  there  is  no 
unmutilated  Catholicity  resting  on  the  un- 
broken tradition  and  belief  of  the  Catholic 
Church. 

Both  the  great  realities  that  are  signified 
by  these  two  words  have  their  close  ap- 
plication to  the  present  world  crisis.    Holy 
Communion  and  Holy  Sacrifice  both  lie 
[61  ] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

closer  to  the  sickness  that  has  overwhelmed 
society  than  we  ourselves  are  disposed  to 
think,  while  for  the  great  majority  of  men 
any  hint  of  association  is  preposterous. 

Materialism  cannot  remain  the  law  of 
life,  the  lodestar  of  human  endeavour;  it 
cannot  even  exist  in  a  world  where  all  ma- 
terial things  are  seen  to  be  only  evanescent 
phenomena,  where  matter  itself  is  recog- 
nized not  only  as  the  vehicle  of  the  spirit 
and  a  means  towards  the  achieving  of 
spiritual  vision,  but  also  as  impermanent 
world-stuff  out  of  which,  by  essential 
transformation,  something  else  is  made, 
that  thing  for  the  achieving  of  which  life, 
as  we  know  life  on  this  earth,  exists.  How 
thin,  futile,  inconsiderable,  in  the  light 
of  this  vision,  seem  all  those  material 
ends  and  those  material  methods  which 
for  so  many  generations  have  been  the 
base  ideals  of  men.  The  sinister  politics 
and  oblique  diplomacy,  the  delusive  phi- 
losophies of  evolutionists  and  pragmatists, 
the  subterranean  machinations  of  high 
finance  and  "big  business,"  the  gross  op- 
portunism of  social  systems,  the  ignoble 
warfare  of  industrial  civilization,  all  show 
[62] 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE  FUTURE 

hollow  and  valueless  in  the  light  of  spirit- 
ual revelation  as  this  comes  brokenly  to  us 
through  the  red  tempest  of  war.  Sooner 
or  later,  whether  through  victory  or  defeat 
(it  is  inevitable  whatever  the  issue;  the  dif- 
ference lies  only  in  time),  we  shall  confront 
the  giant  task  of  rebuilding  a  world.  Let 
us  see  that  our  foundations  are  secure,  for 
without  them,  deep-laid  and  firmly  fixed, 
no  superstructure  of  human  ingenuity  will 
stand  for  a  generation. 

Greater  than  the  deliberations  of  Peace 
Conferences  with  their  paper  treaties, 
greater  than  new  constitutions  and  novel 
frontiers,  greater  than  political  and  indus- 
trial and  social  devices  sprung  from  the 
fertile  brains  of  ingenious  artificers,  will 
be  the  determinations  of  religion  and  phi- 
losophy. Thus  far,  since  the  battle  cry  of 
Armageddon  sounded  on  those  last  days 
of  July,  1914,  neither  has  played  a  prom- 
inent or  even  a  creditable  part.  From  the 
Cardinal  of  Malines  to  the  priest  soldiers 
in  the  trenches  and  the  chaplains  of  many 
faiths,  there  are  endless  instances  of  indi- 
vidual nobility  and  heroism,  and  the  list  of 
martyrs  and  confessors  increases  daily.  For 
the  Church  itself,  whether  Roman,  An- 
[63  ] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

glican,  or  Eastern,  very  little  can  be  said; 
and  less  is  said.  The  ominous  fact  is  that 
it  was  and  is  a  negligible  factor.  The  same 
is  true  of  the  Protestant  sects  in  their  cor- 
porate capacity,  whether  they  are  the  obe- 
dient sycophants  of  German  autocracy 
or  the  free  associations  of  England  and 
America.  Organized  religion,  Catholic 
and  Protestant,  has  not  only  failed  to  meet 
the  crisis  in  any  measurable  degree,  or  to 
adapt  itself  to  the  enormous  agony  of  un- 
counted millions,  it  has  sunk  out  of  sight 
so  far  as  world-forces  are  concerned,  and 
its  word,  if  uttered,  would  now  go  unheard. 
In  the  greatest  cataclysm  since  the  fall  of 
Rome  the  Church  has  ceased  to  function 
as  an  operative,  public  force. 

So  with  philosophy.  In  Germany  the 
men  once  so  inordinately  famous  (I  know 
not  why)  just  before  the  war,  the  Euckens 
and  their  kind,  have  become  the  apologists 
of  dishonour.  The  greatest  figure  in  France, 
Bergson,  is  silent  before  a  crisis  he  cannot 
meet,  and  among  English-speaking  people 
we  have  only  a  Father  Figgis  or  a  Chester- 
ton to  fight  through  the  blind  chaos  in  the 
desperate  endeavour  to  find  some  signs  of  a 
philosophy  of  life  that  may  clear  the  way 
[641 


SACRAMENTALISM  AND  THE  FUTURE 

for  that  which  is  to  come.  Not  alone  were 
we  unprepared  in  a  political,  industrial,  eco- 
nomic and  military  sense  to  meet  the  assault 
of  a  conscienceless  and  efficient  enemy,  our 
unpreparedness  extended  equally  to  the  cate- 
gories of  philosophy  and  religion,  and  we 
suffer,  and  may  in  the  end  fail,  quite  as 
much  on  account  of  one  as  of  the 
other. 

Thus  far  we  have  failed,  but  we  can  al- 
ways look  to  the  future,  and  it  is  never  too 
late  for  amendment,  even  for  the  winning 
of  salvation.  I  cannot  presume  to  speak 
for  the  Church  of  Rome,  whose  defects 
and  delinquencies  are  other  than  our  own. 
I  do  not  propose  to  speak  for  Protestantism, 
which  must  act  in  accordance  with  its  own 
principles,  which  are  so  different  from 
those  of  Catholicism  that  no  common 
ground  appears.  For  ourselves,  members 
of  the  Anglican  Church,  I  see  the  need 
of  new  and  radically  different  action  along 
many  lines;  but  none  is  more  vital,  more 
immediate  in  its  necessity,  more  closely 
connected  with  the  vast  problem  of  the 
World  after  the  War,  than  those  I  postu- 
lated at  the  beginning  of  this  essay:  sac- 
ramentalism  as  the  basic  philosophical 
[65  1 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

system  of  the  Church;  the  Seven  Sacra- 
ments as  its  fundamental  mode  of  operation ; 
Holy  Mass  as  the  central  fact  of  its  wor- 
ship and  its  Divine  strength,  and  the  real- 
ity and  efficacy  of  the  Eucharist  Sacrifice. 


[66] 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL 
NECESSITY 

THEY  are  called  wise  who  put  things 
in  their  right  order  and  control  them 
well."  So  begins  the  first  sentence 
of  the  "Summa  Contra  Gentiles"  of  St. 
Thomas  Aquinas.  The  implied  condemna- 
tion of  those  who  establish  false  standards  of 
comparative  value  and  ill  control  those  er- 
roneously fixed,  holds  today  as  it  held  in  the 
year  1262,  even  though  now  they  may  be 
a  preponderant  multitude  where  then  they 
were  a  minor  if  conspicuous  faction. 

"To  put  things  in  their  right  order  and 
control  them  well " ;  is  not  this  the  essence 
of  wisdom  and  the  secret  of  righteous  life? 
To  weigh  and  assort  all  things,  estimating 
the  value  of  each  in  relation  to  all  others 
and  to  eternal  truth;  to  exalt  and  pursue 
the  things  that  are  great  and  admirable  and 
everlasting;  to  cast  down  and  reject  those 
things  that  are  insignificant  and  transitory 
and  without  value.  This  is  the  substance 
of  wisdom,  as  it  is  the  object  of  each  man's 
[  67  ] 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

living;  that  he  may  control  them  well,  both 
the  great  things  and  the  small,  not  with 
fumbling  hands  and  by  unstable  minds 
swayed  by  every  wind  of  doctrine  aroused 
by  Roger  Bacon's  vulgi  sensus  imperiti,but 
with  the  firm  grasp  of  mastership  directed 
by  an  intrepid  and  reasonable  mind. 

This  is  that  Wisdom  that  is  the  eternal 
goal  of  intellectual  man,  and  Philosophia 
the  way  of  that  everlasting  pilgrimage. 
"Philosophy,"  says  the  great  Cardinal  of 
Malines,  "  is  the  science  of  the  totality  of 
things.  The  particular  sciences  are  di- 
rected to  groups  of  objects  more  or  less 
restricted;  philosophy,  the  general  science, 
regards  the  sum-total  of  reality."  So  it  ap- 
pears that  philosophy  alone  enables  us  to 
"put  things  in  their  right  order"  when 
the  accidents  and  illusions  of  life,  and  the 
narrow  outlook  of  the  single  sciences,  have 
confused  all  relations;  and  without  a  right 
philosophy  we  are  as  those  of  whom  Hugh 
of  St.  Victor  speaks  who  "  stumbled  and 
fell  into  the  falsehoods  of  their  own 
imaginings." 

But  the  boon  of  a  right  philosophy  is  not 
the  wages  of  a  delving  intellectuality  nor 
is  it  the  laurel  crown  of  profound  erudition. 
[68] 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

They  that  are  thus  furnished  may  attain  the 
highest  good,  as  Aristotle  and  St,  Thomas 
Aquinas,  but  achievement  is  granted  also 
to  the  humble  and  the  unlearned ;  the  shep- 
herd on  the  hills,  the  poet  in  bitter  exile, 
the  monk  in  his  forgotten  cloister.  There 
is  much  truth  in  the  words  of  Friar  Bacon: 
"All  the  wisdom  of  philosophy  is  created 
by  God  and  given  to  the  philosophers,  and 
it  is  Himself  that  illuminates  the  minds  of 
men  in  all  wisdom."  This  is  necessarily 
so;  from  Aristotle  to  the  modern  Aquinas, 
Henri  Bergson,  every  philosopher  who  can 
justly  claim  the  title  has  based  his  system  on 
the  primary  assumption  that  man,  of  his 
own  motion,  cannot  remotely  touch  the 
"  thing-in-itself,"  the  noumenon,  the  Ab- 
solute, but  is  able  to  deal  only  with  the 
phenomenon  or,  as  Aristotle  calls  it,  the 
"  phantasm."  "  In  the  present  state  of  life, 
in  which  the  soul  is  united  to  a  passible 
body,"  says  St.  Thomas,  "it  is  impossible 
for  our  intellect  to  understand  anything 
actually,  except  by  turning  to  the  phan- 
tasm " ;  and  Bergson  says  the  same  when  he 
states  as  an  axiom  that  "  the  mind  of  man 
by  its  very  nature  is  incapable  of  appre- 
hending reality."  Philo,  the  Platonist  Jew, 
[69] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

put  it  succinctly  when  he  wrote,  "The  tram- 
mels of  the  body  prevent  men  from  know- 
ing God  in  Himself;  He  is  known  only  in 
the  Divine  forces  in  which  He  manifests 
Himself." 

Yet  if  we  would  live  we  must  be  able 
"to  put  things  in  their  right  order,"  and 
to  know  God  in  the  sense  of  personal  ap- 
proach if  not  of  comprehension.  It  is  here 
that  the  love  of  God  shows  itself  in  that  He 
does  again  and  again  reveal  enough  of 
the  everlasting  wisdom  and  of  Himself  to 
enable  men  to  assure  themselves  that  He 
is,  and,  if  they  will,  to  turn  their  footsteps 
in  the  right  way. 

Through  the  Incarnation  came  not  only 
the  Redemption  but  also  the  Enlightenment, 
and  thereafter  the  order  of  the  Universe  and 
the  significance  of  life  were  as  clear  as  they 
may  ever  be  without  a  further  explicit 
revelation;  but  "God  has  never  left  Him- 
self without  a  witness,"  and  so  five  centuries 
before  the  Incarnation,  and  since  then 
amongst  those  who  knew  not  Christ,  much 
has  been  revealed,  so  that  great  philoso- 
phers have  appeared  and  have  spoken 
"with  the  tongues  of  men  and  angels,"  and 
the  things  that  we  may  use  for  our  soul's 
[70] 


THE   PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

health  today,  when  in  our  own  time,  with 
all  our  erudition  and  our  scientific  attain- 
ment and  our  stored-up  knowledge  of  cen- 
turies, the  Divine  revelation  has  not  come, 
and  we  have  not  only  forgotten  or  rejected 
the  philosophy  of  the  inspired  men  of  the 
past,  but  as  well  have  taken  to  ourselves 
those  that  spoke  without  God,  makers  of 
false  philosophies,  and  so  have  "  fallen  into 
the  falsehoods  of  our  own  imaginings." 

In  this  fact  lies  not  only  the  reason  why 
the  world  in  spite  of  its  material  glory 
dipped  lower  and  lower  towards  the  point 
of  disaster  achieved  in  July  A.D.  1914,  but 
the  explanation  of  the  notorious  inability 
of  both  organized  religion  and  formal 
philosophy  to  meet  the  challenge  of  a 
world  in  dissolution  during  four  years  of 
war,  and  finally  the  lack  of  a  great,  con- 
structive, dynamic  leading  on,  at  this  mo- 
ment when  the  destinies  of  man  are  being 
determined  for  a  period  of  five  centuries. 
There  is  today  no  operative  philosophy  of 
life;  we  are  trifling  with  the  shreds  and 
shards  of  the  materialistic  and  mechanical 
substitutes  of  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries,  from  Descartes  to  Herbert  Spen- 
cer, from  Hobbes  and  Kant  to  Nietzsche 
[71  ] 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

and  William  James,  and  in  them  there  is 
neither  health  nor  safety,  nor  the  clear 
conviction,  the  lucid  and  logical  organism, 
the  invigorating  and  passionate  force  of 
the  Athenians,  the  Fathers  of  the  Church, 
the  Neo-Platonists  or  the  mighty  masters 
of  Medievalism. 

The  Reformation  destroyed  more  for  us 
of  the  North  and  the  West  than  the  fabric 
of  the  Catholic  Church  and  the  substance  of 
the  Catholic  Faith.  The  nexus  between 
theology  and  philosophy  is  so  close  that 
what  affects  one  affects  the  other.  "In- 
tellige  ut  credas;  crede  ut  intelligas"  says 
St.  Augustine.  It  is  not  so  much  that  the- 
ology begins  where  philosophy  leaves  off, 
and  vice  versa,  as  it  is  that  both  pursue  an 
actually  parallel  course  in  time,  and  side 
by  side;  if  one  falls  the  other  stumbles,  and 
unless  quick  recovery  is  effected  both  are 
involved  in  a  common  ruin.  I  do  not  know 
which  stumbled  first  at  that  critical  moment 
when  Medievalism  yielded  to  the  Renais- 
sance. Machiavelli  wrote  "  II  Principe " 
in  1513,  Luther  posted  his  Theses  in  1517, 
and  the  protagonist  of  the  assault  on  Catho- 
lic philosophy  and  ethics  would  thus  ap- 
pear to  have  an  advantage  of  some  four 
[72] 


THE   PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

years  over  the  protagonist  of  the  assault  on 
Catholic  theology  and  religion.  On  the 
other  hand,  while  the  new  paganism  in 
philosophy  does  not  antedate  the  fall  of 
Constantinople  in  1453,  the  particular  form 
of  heresy  that  was  to  rend  the  unity  of  the 
Church  for  the  latest  time  and  plunge  entire 
nations  in  centuries  of  heresy  and  schism, 
had  shown  itself  sporadically  more  than  a 
hundred  years  before.  The  question  is  of 
no  importance;  the  first  breakdown  of 
Catholic  theology  and  Catholic  philosophy 
practically  synchronized  during  the  period 
known  as  the  Reformation,  and  wherever 
the  Faith  was  abandoned  the  philosophy 
went  with  it. 

Our  own  epoch,  modernism  (as  one 
should  say  Medievalism,  or  the  Dark  Ages 
or  Roman  Imperialism),  the  five  hundred 
years  extending  from  the  formal  end  of  the 
Middle  Ages  in  1453,  to  1953  —  or  whatever 
may  be  the  year  when  the  next  epoch  is 
determined  for  good  or  ill,  —  is  that  period 
during  which  the  peoples  that  rejected  both 
Catholic  theology  and  Catholic  philosophy, 
or  tolerated  both  with  a  thin  formalism  that 
voided  them  of  all  power,  have  directed 
the  development  of  society  and  determined 
[73  1  ' 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND   MYRRH 

the  lives  of  its  peoples  up  to  and  including 
its  climacteric  in  the  Great  War.  Whether 
they  were  worth  having  at  the  price,  this 
new  religion  and  this  new  philosophy  —  or 
rather  these,  for  the  diversity  is  extreme  — 
does  not  concern  me  at  this  present.  The 
point  I  wish  to  make  is  that  as  those  two 
things,  each  unique  in  its  sphere,  made 
possible  the  five  centuries  of  Mediaeval 
civilization  which  formed  the  most  suc- 
cessful exposition  of  Christianity  that  has 
thus  far  been  achieved,  and  that  as  their 
obliteration  is  responsible  for  the  civiliza- 
tion (however  we  may  estimate  it)  that  has 
now  succeeded  in  destroying  itself  after 
a  remarkable  dominion  of  other  five  cen- 
turies, so  the  future,  the  foundations  of 
which  we  have  now  to  lay,  can  only  ap- 
proach in  dignity,  nobility  and  achievement 
the  Christian  centuries  of  the  Middle  Ages 
if  we  are  willing  and  able  to  forsake  mod- 
ernist religion  and  modernist  philosophy 
and  return  explicitly  to  the  religion  and 
the  philosophy  of  that  incomparable  olden 
time.  In  a  word,  a  sane  and  wholesome 
and  just  and  righteous  future  can  be  built 
only  on  the  corner-stones  of  Catholic  re- 
ligion and  sacramental  philosophy. 
[  741 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

For  once  it  is  not  necessary  to  argue  over 
the  matter  of  religion;  the  logic  of  events 
has  dealt  with  that  and  fixed  its  own  de- 
terminations. The  question  of  philosophy 
is  in  a  different  category.  We  have  so  long 
been  accustomed  to  live  without  a  philoso- 
phy and  to  take  refuge  in  archaeology  and 
"the  appeal  to  history"  and  the  flimsy 
scaffoldings  of  Teutonism  or  Evolutionism 
or  Pragmatism,  we  neither  feel  the  need  of 
this  strong  defence,  this  vast  directing 
energy,  nor  take  kindly  to  it  when  it  is 
offered.  Yet  there  can  be  no  right  and 
enduring  religion  without  a  right  philos- 
ophy, as  there  can  be  no  right  and  endur- 
ing philosophy  without  a  right  religion. 
"  Philosophy  is  the  science  of  the  totality 
of  things."  "They  are  called  wise  [that 
is  to  say,  philosophers]  who  put  things  in 
their  right  order  and  control  them  well." 
"  Philosophy  regards  the  sum-total  of  re- 
ality." The  moment  has  come  for  us  to  see 
things  as  a  whole,  to  establish  a  new  system 
of  comparative  values,  to  confront  not 
fictions  but  realities.  "The  integrity  of 
our  nature  is  repaired  by  wisdom,"  wrote 
St.  Vincent  of  Beauvais.  Reparation  lies 
before  us,  —  of  our  nature,  of  society  and  of 
[751 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

the  world,  —  and  to  that  end  we  must  turn 
to  philosophy,  that  as  ever  it  may  fortify 
the  impulse  of  religion  and  by  religion  be 
irradiated  by  the  grace  of  God. 

What  then  is  this  philosophy  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  that  is  in  itself  as  definitive  as  the 
Catholic  Faith?  It  is  no  ethnic  or  passing 
intellectual  by-product;  it  is  the  synthesis 
of  antecedent  philosophies,  Neo-Platonic, 
Jewish,  Arabian,  Byzantine,  Patristic, 
Peripatetic,  Socratic,  purged  of  their  alien 
elements,  gathered  into  an  organic  unity, 
and  vitalized  by  the  Catholic  religion.  Its 
greatest  exponents  are  St.  Thomas  Aquinas, 
Duns  Scotus  and  Hugh  of  St.  Victor.  It 
was  this  philosophy  that,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  formed  the  substance  of  the 
wisdom  of  the  peoples  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
conditioning  all  their  acts  and  all  their 
intellectual  processes.  As,  with  the  Catho- 
lic religion,  it  was  the  energizing  force  in 
life,  making  possible  the  only  consistent 
Christian  civilization  thus  far  achieved,  so 
was  it  the  full  rounding  out  of  a  great  cul- 
ture that  re-created  all  the  arts  for  its  own 
expression,  invented  new  ones,  and  raised 
them  all  to  a  level  of  unexampled  achieve- 
ment. Its  abandonment  synchronized,  if 
[76] 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

it  did  not  compass,  the  fall  of  Christian 
civilization  and  the  entrance  of  the  New 
Paganism  which  has  now,  in  its  turn,  met 
its  nemesis  in  its  own  suicidal  aggrandize- 
ment 

In  trying  to  express  in  brief  and  sugges- 
tive form  this  philosophy  of  sacramentalism, 
I  have  not  confined  myself  to  any  one 
system,  neither  to  the  Dominican,  the 
Franciscan  nor  the  Augustinian  synthesis; 
I  have  tried  to  establish  a  working  theory 
by  a  moulding  together  of  all  three  (since 
for  all  practical  purposes  this  is  what 
historically  happened)  and  I  have  not  dis- 
dained a  return,  on  occasion,  to  the  Neo- 
Platonists,  particularly  Plotinus,  and  to  the 
Greek  and  Jewish  philosophers  themselves, 
from  whom  all  their  successors  have 
learned  much  and  at  whose  feet  they  have 
sat  as  respectful  scholars.  Daring  much 
in  this  process,  I  have  doubtless  fallen  into 
philosophical  error,  and  perhaps  have  even 
offended  against  dogmatic  truth,  but  I  pro- 
fess here  and  now  that  I  submit  all  I  say  to 
Catholic  Authority,  and  that  I  desire  to 
teach  nothing  contrary  to  the  Catholic 
Faith. 

The  world  as  we  know  it,-  man,  life  itself 
[77] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

as  it  works  through  all  creation,  is  the  union 
of  matter  and  spirit;  and  matter  is  not 
spirit,  nor  spirit  matter,  nor  is  one  a  mode 
of  the  other,  but  they  are  two  different 
creatures.  Apart  from  this  union  of  matter 
and  spirit  there  is  no  life  in  the  sense  in 
which  we  know  it,  and  severance  is  death. 
"The  body,"  says  St.  Thomas,  "is  not  of 
the  essence  of  the  soul ;  but  the  soul  by  the 
nature  of  its  essence  can  be  united  to  the 
body,  so  that,  properly  speaking,  the  soul 
alone  is  not  the  species,  but  the  composite," 
and  Duns  Scotus  makes  clear  the  nature  and 
origin  of  this  common  "essence"  when  he 
says  there  is  "  on  the  one  hand  God  as  In- 
finite Actuality,  on  the  other  spiritual  and 
corporal  substances  possessing  a  homo- 
geneous common  element."  That  is  to  say, 
both  matter  and  spirit  are  the  result  of  the 
Divine  creative  act  and  though  separate 
and  opposed  find  their  common  point  of 
departure  in  the  Divine  Actuality. 

The  created  world  is  the  concrete  mani- 
festation of  matter  through  which,  for  its 
own  transformation  and  redemption,  spirit 
is  active  in  a  constant  process  of  interpene- 
tration,  whereby  matter  itself  is  being 
eternally  redeemed.  What  then  is  matter, 
[781 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

and  what  is  spirit?  In  the  theory  of  Ploti- 
nus,  "  the  process  of  emanation  from  a 
Supreme  Principle,  the  one  source  of  all 
existing  things,  explains  the  physical  and 
metaphysical  worlds.  According  as  the 
principle  gives  out  its  energy,  it  exhausts 
itself,  its  determinations  follow  a  descend- 
ing scale,  becoming  less  and  less  perfect. 
Every  generative  process  implies  a  deca- 
dence or  inferiority  in  the  generated  prod- 
uct. And  in  the  series  of  Divine  genera- 
tions there  must  be  a  final  stage,  at  which 
the  primal  energy,  weakened  by  successive 
emissions,  is  no  longer  capable  of  produc- 
ing anything  real.  A  limit  is  necessarily 
reached  beneath  which  there  cannot  be 
anything  less  perfect;  this  limit  is  matter. 
Matter  is  merely  the  space  which  con- 
ditions all  corporate  existence;  it  is  a  pure 
possibility  of  being,  mere  nothingness,  and 
is  identified  with  primitive  evil." 

In  the  sense  he  clearly  intends,  Plotinus' 
theory  of  "emanation"  is  of  course  super- 
seded by  the  Christian  doctrine  of  creation, 
but  it  was  an  illuminating  approximation  to 
final  truth.  Similarly,  God  cannot  exhaust 
Himself,  but  there  is  manifestly  a  great  dis- 
crepancy in  point  of  perfection  between  the 
[79] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

angels  at  one  end  of  the  scale,  and  simple 
matter,  before  form  is  given  it,  at  the  other, 
while  in  between  are  the  many  categories 
of  creation.  Neither  is  matter  "mere 
nothingness,"  for  it  is  a  created  thing 
therefore  it  exists,  even  without  form.  I  do 
not  quote  Plotinus  as  authoritative,  but 
rather  as  one  who  through  "  natural "  reve- 
lation has  approached  closely  to  the  truth 
of  Divine  revelation. 

Subjected  to  certain  necessary  changes  in 
terminology  I  cannot  see  why  this  defini- 
tion of  matter  does  not  coincide  with  Duns 
Scotus'  Materla  primo  prima,  which  is 
thus  described  by  the  great  Franciscan. 
"Materia  primo  prima  is  the  indeterminate 
element  of  contingent  things.  This  does  not 
exist  in  Nature,  but  it  has  reality  in  so  far 
as  it  constitutes  the  term  of  God's  creative 
activity.  By  its  union  with  a  substantial 
form  it  becomes  endowed  with  the  attri- 
butes of  quantity  and  becomes  secundo 
prima.  Subject  to  the  substantial  changes 
of  Nature  it  is  matter  as  we  perceive  it."  * 

It  is  this  materia  primo  prima,  "  the  term 

*  Plotinus  calls  matter  "the  limit"  of  Divine  generation  be- 
cause it  marks  the  exhaustion  of  creative  activity.  Scotus  calls  it 
"the  term"  because  beyond  it  God  did  not  will  to  extend  this 
creative  activity. 

[80] 


THE   PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

of  God's  creative  activity,"  that  is  eternally 
subjected  to  the  regenerative  process  of 
spiritual  interpenetration,  and  the  result  is 
organic  life. 

Is  this  matter  "primitive  evil"  in  the 
sense  in  which  Plotinus  uses  it?  No,  for 
omne  ens  est  bonum  and  because  "  God 
made  all  things  good  from  the  beginning." 
On  the  other  hand,  matter  is  in  itself  dead, 
inert,  constantly  exerting  on  spirit  a  gravi- 
tational pull  that  must  be  overcome.  In 
a  real  sense,  therefore,  its  inertness  does 
manifest  itself  as  "evil"  since  its  resistance 
to  spirit  is  actual  and  must  be  overcome. 

What  is  "spirit"  as  the  term  is  used 
here?  The  creative  Power  of  the  Logos, 
in  the  sense  in  which  St.  John  interprets 
and  corrects  the  early,  partial  and  errone- 
ous theory  of  the  Stoics  and  of  Philo.  God 
the  Son,  the  Eternal  Word  of  the  Father, 
"  the  brightness  of  His  glory  and  the  figure 
of  His  substance."  "God  of  God,  Light 
of  Light,  very  God  of  very  God,  begotten 
not  made,  being  of  one  substance  with  the 
Father,  by  whom  all  things  were  made." 
Pure  wisdom,  pure  intellect,  pure  will, 
unconditioned  by  matter,  but  creating  life 
out  of  the  operation  of  His  Spirit  on  and 
[81  ] 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND   MYRRH 

through  matter,  and  in  the  fullness  of  time 
becoming  Incarnate  for  the  purpose  of  the 
final  redemption  of  man. 

Now  since  man  is  so  compact  of  matter 
and  of  spirit,  it  must  follow  that  he  cannot 
lay  hold  of  that  pure  spirit,  that  Absolute 
that  lies  beyond  and  above  all  material 
conditioning,  except  through  the  medium 
of  matter,  through  its  figures,  its  symbol- 
ism, its  "  phantasms."  Says  St.  Thomas, 
"  From  material  things  we  can  rise  to 
some  kind  of  knowledge  of  immaterial 
things,  but  not  to  the  perfect  knowledge 
thereof."  The  way  of  life,  therefore,  is 
the  increasing  endeavour  of  man  to  ap- 
proach the  Absolute  through  the  leading 
of  the  Holy  Spirit,  so  running  parallel  to 
that  slow  perfecting  of  matter  which  is  being 
effected  by  the  same  operation.  So  matter 
takes  on  a  certain  sanctity,  not  only  as  some- 
thing in  process  of  perfection,  but  as  the 
vehicle  of  spirit  and  its  tabernacle,  since  in 
matter  spirit  is  for  us  in  a  sense  incarnate. 

From  this  process  follows  of  necessity  the 
whole  sacramental  system  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  as  this  is  set  over  against  both  the 
Protestant  theory  and  that  of  modernist 
symbolism.  To  the  Protestant  as  to  the 
F  82  1 


THE   PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

Jew  the  material  thing  is  (though  only  in 
theory)  incorrigibly  base,  to  be  despised 
and  treated  with  contempt,  while  the 
spiritual  thing,  the  soul,  may  and  does  unite 
itself  to,  and  perfectly  achieve  union  with 
ultimate  spirit  directly,  without  the  in- 
tervention of  the  material  vehicle,  and  in 
proportion  to  its  isolation  from  matter. 
The  Protestant  rejects  even  the  value  of  the 
symbol;  the  modern  symbolist,  or  ritualist 
if  you  like  the  word  better,  sees  the  symbol 
and  values  it,  but  he  does  not  recognize 
the  reality  behind  the  symbol,  contenting 
himself  with  what  is  no  more  than  a  form 
of  poetry  or  other  art,  and  he  no  more 
achieves  either  a  right  philosophy,  the  real 
religion,  or  that  mystical  union  with  God 
that  is  his  aim,  than  does  the  Protestant  or 
the  scientific  rationalist.  I  speak  of  gen- 
eralities; there  are  anomalous  personalities 
that,  for  His  own  ends,  God  gives  that 
Beatific  Vision  that  "  o'erleaps  the  bounds " 
of  matter,  whereby  the  law  of  life  is  for 
them  superseded  and  the  material  nexus  is 
abrogated.  These  are  the  prophets,  seers, 
mystics,  —  the  greatest  artists  perhaps  as 
well,  —  but  they  are  not  properly  of  this 
world  as  we  know  it;  for  the  vast  majority 
[  83  ] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

of   men   the   way   of   matter   is   the   road 
proscribed. 

How  fatal  is  this  pseudo-philosophy  that 
would  cleave  life  in  halves  by  isolating 
matter  on  one  side  and  spirit  on  the  other, 
is  shown  by  the  experience  of  those  who 
accepted  it.  Rejecting  the  Sacraments  as 
Divine  channnels  of  grace  ordered  and 
established  for  the  transfusion  through  ma- 
terial agencies  of  the  power  of  God  the 
Holy  Ghost,  and  denying  even  the  value 
of  their  symbolism;  denouncing  the  priest- 
hood as  a  man-made  obstacle  between  the 
created  and  the  Creator;  scorning  the  body 
and  condemning  all  material  things  as  hate- 
ful and  as  stumbling-blocks;  they  never- 
theless became  the  proponents  of  aggressive 
materialism;  organizers  of  industrialism, 
creators  of  "big  business"  and  "high 
finance,"  exploiters  of  labour  and  of 
markets,  prophets  of  a  civilization  of  greed, 
covetousness  and  profiteering.  It  is  the 
Protestant  nations  and  their  enclaves  of 
Jews  that  built  up  that  materialistic  civil- 
ization that  in  its  bloated  triumph  finds 
its  own  nemesis  in  the  war  of  the  last  five 
years  and  the  events  that  are  to  follow  in 
the  five  next  years  that  are  to  come.  The 
[  84] 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

material  thing  is  deadly  only  when  it  is  cut 
off  from  the  spiritual  thing;  united,  matter 
ennobled  as  an  agent,  spirit  familiarized 
through  its  homely  housing,  we  have  that 
just  balance  which  has  issue  in  a  culture  and 
a  civilization  such  as  that  of  the  Middle 
Ages. 

Sacramentalism,  in  theology,  in  disci- 
pline and  in  philosophy,  is  the  essential 
system  of  Christianity,  and  it  follows  in- 
evitably from  the  fundamental  doctrines 
of  the  Incarnation  and  the  Redemption. 
Those  portions  of  the  Church  of  Christ  that 
adhere  to  it  in  its  three  manifestations  will 
endure,  the  others  will  wither  away. 
Furthermore,  no  compromise  is  possible 
any  more  than  compromise  is  possible  with 
truth.  As  the  time  came  when  America 
could  no  longer  exist  half  slave  and  half 
free,  so  the  time  has  now  come  (and  the 
warning  has  been  explicit)  when  the 
Church  can  no  longer  exist  under  the  same 
conditions. 

As  the  rejection  of  the  Seven  Sacraments 
deprived  northern  Europe  of  that  stream 
of  spiritual  energy,  forever,  and  by  the 
covenant  of  God,  coursing  through  the 
several  material  channels  of  operation, 
[85  ] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

leaving  man  bereft  of  his  surest  reinforce- 
ment against  the  eternal  gravitational  pull 
of  matter;  as  the  abandonment  of  Catholic 
order  and  discipline  unloosed  the  floods  of 
intellectual  insolence  and  vulgarian  pre- 
sumptuousness,  cleaving  Christianity  in 
halves  and  reducing  the  moiety  thereof  into 
a  howling  chaos  of  ill-conditioned  heresies, 
so  the  forsaking  of  sacramental  philosophy 
left  life  meaningless  except  as  a  sort  of  neo- 
Manicheism  as  exploited  by  Calvin  and 
the  Puritans,  and  as  an  everlasting  warfare, 
the  prize  of  which  was  material  gain 
through  power  or  money,  as  was  demon- 
strated (though  not  always  avowed)  by  the 
creators  and  beneficiaries  of  industrial 
civilization.  The  nineteenth  century  phi- 
losophy of  Evolution  with  its  dogmas  of  the 
struggle  for  life,  and  the  survival  of  the 
fittest,  was  the  effort  of  sincere  men  to  cast 
a  veil  of  respectability  over  a  thing  in  itself 
ignominious  and  unchristian,  and  the  re- 
sults of  its  acceptance  have  recently  been 
demonstrated  to  admiration. 

Dualism  is  the  destroyer  of  righteousness, 

and  the  Catholic  philosophy  of  sacramen- 

talism  is  the  antithesis  of  dualism.     The 

sanctity  of  matter  as  the  potential  of  spirit 

[  86] 


and  its  dwelling-place  on  earth;  the  human- 
izing of  spirit  through  its  condescension 
to  man  through  the  making  of  his  body  and 
all  created  things  its  earthly  tabernacle, 
give,  when  carried  out  into  logical  develop- 
ment, a  meaning  to  life  and  a  glory  to  the 
world  and  an  elucidation  of  otherwise  un- 
solvable  mysteries,  and  an  impulse  towards 
noble  living,  neither  Protestantism  nor 
even  Christian  Science  can  afford.  It  is 
a  real  philosophy  of  life,  a  standard  of 
values,  a  criterion  of  all  possible  postulates, 
and  as  its  loss  meant  the  world's  death,  so 
its  recovery  may  mean  its  resurrection. 

In  harmony  with  this  consummate  phi- 
losophy, and  as  its  inevitable  corollary, 
came  the  whole  sacramental  system  of  the 
Church,  whereby  every  material  thing  was 
recognized  as  possessing  in  varying  degree 
sacramental  potentiality,  while  seven  great 
Sacraments  were  instituted  to  be,  each  after 
its  own  fashion,  a  special  channel  for  the 
influx  of  the  power  of  God  the  Holy  Ghost. 
Each  was  a  symbol,  a  "phantasm,"  to  use  the 
word  of  Aristotle,  just  as  so  many  other 
created  things  were,  or  could  become, 
symbols,  but  beyond  this  they  were  realities, 
veritable  media  for  the  veritable  communi- 
[87  J 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

cation  of  veritable  Divine  grace.  Voided  of 
power,  reduced  to  the  status  of  mere  sym- 
bols, they  become  nothing;  only  the  senti- 
mental stimuli  of  personal  emotion.  There 
is  no  better  definition  of  a  Sacrament  than 
that  of  Hugh  of  St.  Victor :  " The  Sacrament 
is  the  corporeal  or  material  element  set  out 
sensibly,  representing  from  its  similitude, 
signifying  from  its  institution,  and  contain- 
ing from  its  sanctification,  some  invisible 
and  spiritual  grace."  This  is  the  unvarying 
and  unvariable  doctrine  of  the  Catholic 
Church ;  and  the  reason  for  its  existence  as 
a  living  and  functioning  organism,  and  the 
very  methods  of  its  operation,  follow  from 
this  supreme  institution  of  the  Sacraments. 
The  whole  sacramental  system  is  in  a  sense 
an  extension  of  the  Redemption,  and  one 
Sacrament,  the  Eucharist,  also  in  a  sense  an 
extension  of  the  Incarnation,  just  as  it  is 
also  a  daily,  even  hourly,  extension  in  time 
of  the  Sacrifice  of  Calvary.  The  Church 
considered  as  simply  the  fellowship  of  the 
faithful  is  not  an  organism,  it  is  an  emotion. 
The  Catholic  Church  is  more  than  this;  it 
is  a  living  organism,  and  as  such  it  is  subject 
to  the  definite,  explicit  and  unchanging 
laws  of  its  organic  system.  What  happens  to 
[  88  ] 


THE   PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

the  individual  when  he  ceases  to  be  a  justly 
co-ordinated  organism  is  demonstrated  in 
countless  insane  asylums.  What  happens 
to  a  State  under  similar  conditions  is  ac- 
complished by  Russia  and  is  in  process  of 
evolution  in  Germany,  if  not  throughout 
modern  society.  Indeed  Protestantism  it- 
self is  sufficient  evidence  of  the  disastrous 
results  that  follow  from  such  an  abnormal 
course. 

The  Incarnation  and  the  Redemption 
are  not  accomplished  facts,  completed  nine- 
teen centuries  ago,  they  are  processes  that 
still  continue,  and  their  term  is  fixed  only 
by  the  total  regeneration  and  perfecting  of 
matter,  and  the  Seven  Sacraments  are  the 
chiefest  among  an  infinity  of  sacramental 
processses  which  are  the  agencies  of  this 
eternal  transfiguration. 

Christ  not  only  became  Incarnate  to  ac- 
complish the  Redemption  of  men  as  yet 
unborn,  for  endless  ages,  through  the  com- 
pleted Sacrifice  of  Calvary,  but  also  to 
initiate  a  new  method  whereby  the  results 
were  to  be  more  perfectly  attained;  that  is 
to  say,  the  Church,  working  through  the 
specific  sacramental  agencies  He  had  or- 
dained or  was  later  to  ordain  through  His 
I  89] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

direction  of  the  Church  He  had  brought 
into  being  at  Pentecost.  He  did  not  come 
to  ordain  a  revolutionary  code  of  ethics  or 
even  to  offer  in  His  own  Person  a  new 
Model  for  human  following.  He  was 
neither  a  newer  Socrates  nor  an  older 
Buddha,  but  God  Himself,  revealing  the 
whole  system  of  life  and  the  reason  for  the 
world,  and,  through  the  New  Covenant  of 
the  Catholic  Sacraments  and  the  One,  In- 
divisible Catholic  Church  preserved  from 
error  in  its  official  determinations  in  faith 
and  morals,  by  virtue  of  His  Presence 
therein  until  the  consummation  of  the 
world,  to  fix  this  method  of  salvation  in 
terms  and  under  conditions  identical  with 
the  process  of  life  itself,  and  in  forms  fitted 
to  the  comprehension  of,  and  freely  avail- 
able for,  every  man  that  is  born  of  woman. 

He  did  not  come  to  establish  in  material 
form  a  Kingdom  of  Heaven  on  earth  or  to 
provide  for  its  ultimate  coming.  He  in- 
deed established  a  Spiritual  Kingdom,  His 
Church,  "  in  the  world,  not  of  it,"  but  this 
is  a  very  different  matter  —  as  the  centuries 
have  proved.  His  Kingdom  is  not  of  this 
world,  nor  will  it  be  established  here.  The 
folly  and  the  conceit  of  nineteenth  century 
[90] 


THE   PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

evolutionists  have  received  their  quietus 
during  the  last  few  years.  There  has  been 
no  absolute  advance  in  human  development 
since  the  Incarnation,  nor  yet  during  the 
space  of  recorded  history.  Nations  rise  and 
fall,  epochs  wax  and  wane,  civilizations 
grow  out  of  savagery,  crest,  and  sink  back 
into  savagery  again.  Redemption  is  for  the 
individual,  not  for  the  race  nor  yet  for 
society  as  a  whole,  nor  even  for  matter  itself 
except  as  this  becomes  definite  and  concrete 
in  the  individual ;  and  there,  and  only  there, 
and  under  that  form,  it  is  sure,  however 
long  may  be  the  period  of  its  accomplish- 
ment. "Time  is  the  ratio  of  the  resistance 
of  matter  to  the  interpenetration  of  Spirit" 
and  by  this  resistance  is  the  duration  of 
time  determined.  When  it  shall  have  been 
wholly  overcome  then  "time  shall  be  no 
more."  God  the  Holy  Ghost,  proceed- 
ing from  the  Father  and  the  Son,  and  by 
the  channel  of  each  individual  soul,  oper- 
ates directly  on  the  matter  which  in  human 
form  is  the  object  of  redemption,  and  the 
Sacraments  are  not  only  the  Divinely  or- 
dained agencies  of  this  operation  but  the 
perfect  symbols  of  life  itself. 

See  therefore  how  perfect  is  the  corre- 
[91  1 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND   MYRRH 

spondence  between  the  Sacraments  and  the 
method  of  life  where  they  are  the  agents 
and  which  they  symbolically  set  forth. 
There  is  in  each  case  the  material  form  and 
the  spiritual  substance  or  energy.  As  Hugh 
of  St.  Victor  says,  each  represents  from  its 
similitude,  signifies  from  its  institution,  and 
contains  from  its  sanctification  some  invis- 
ible and  spiritual  grace.  Water,  chrism, 
oil,  the  spoken  word,  the  touch  of  the  hands, 
the  sign  of  the  cross,  and  finally  and  su- 
premely the  bread  and  wine  of  Holy  Mass, 
each  a  material  thing  but  each  representing, 
signifying  and  containing  some  gift  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  real,  absolute  and  potent.  So 
matter  and  spirit  are  linked  together  in 
every  operation  of  Holy  Church  from  the 
cradle  to  the  grave,  and  man  has  ever  before 
him  the  eternal  revelation  of  this  linked 
union  of  matter  and  spirit  in  his  life,  the 
eternal  teaching  of  the  honour  of  the  ma- 
terial thing  through  its  agency  and  through 
its  existence  as  the  subject  for  redemption, 
while  through  the  material  association  and 
the  Divine  condescension  to  his  earthly  and 
fallible  estate  (limited  by  the  association 
with  matter  to  only  inadequate  presenta- 
tion) he  makes  the  spirit  of  God  his  own, 
[92] 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

to  dwell  therewith  after  the  fashion  of 
man. 

As  I  have  said  elsewhere,  "Man  ap- 
proaches, and  must  always  approach,  spirit- 
ual things  not  only  through  material  forms 
but  by  means  of  material  agencies.  The 
highest  and  most  beautiful  things,  those 
where  the  spirit  seems  to  achieve  its  loftiest 
reaches,  are  frequently  associated  with  the 
grossest  and  most  unspiritual  material 
forms,  yet  the  very  splendour  of  the  spirit- 
ual verity  redeems  and  glorifies  the  mate- 
rial agency,  while  on  the  other  hand  the 
homeliness  and  even  animal  quality  of  the 
material  thing  brings  to  man,  with  a  poign- 
ancy and  an  appeal  that  are  incalculable, 
the  spiritual  thing  that  in  its  absolute  es- 
sence would  be  so  far  beyond  his  ken  and 
his  experience  and  his  powers  of  assimila- 
tion that  it  would  be  inoperative." 

This  is  the  true  Humanism,  not  the 
fictitious  and  hollow  thing  that  was  the  off- 
spring of  Neo-Paganism  and  took  to  itself 
a  title  to  which  it  had  no  claim.  Held  con- 
sciously or  tacitly  by  the  men  of  the  Middle 
Ages  from  the  immortal  philosopher  to 
the  immortal  but  nameless  craftsman,  it 
was  the  force  that  built  up  the  noble  social 
[93] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

structure  of  the  time  and  poised  man  him- 
self in  a  sure  equilibrium.  Already  it  had 
of  necessity  developed  the  whole  scheme 
of  religious  ceremonial  and  given  art  a  new 
content  and  direction  through  its  new 
service.  By  analogy  and  association  all 
material  things  that  could  be  so  used  were 
employed  as  figures  and  symbols,  as  well 
as  agencies,  through  the  Sacraments,  and 
after  a  fashion  that  struck  home  to  the 
soul  through  the  organs  of  sense.  Music, 
vestments,  poetry  and  dramatic  action,  in- 
cense, candles,  flowers,  all  were  linked  with 
the  great  arts  of  architecture,  painting  and 
sculpture,  and  all  became  not  only  ministers 
to  the  emotional  faculties  but  direct  appeals 
to  the  intellect  through  their  function  as 
poignant  symbols.  So  art  received  its  soul, 
and  was  almost  a  living  thing  until  matter 
and  spirit  were  again  divorced  in  the  death 
that  severed  them  during  the  Reformation, 
and  thereafter  religion  entered  upon  a 
period  of  slow  desiccation  and  sterilization 
wherever  the  symbol  was  cast  away  with 
the  Sacraments  and  the  sacramental  phi- 
losophy that  had  made  it  live.  Indifference 
or  hostility  to  the  pregnant  and  evocative 
and  supremely  beautiful  ceremonial  of  the 
[94] 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

Catholic  Faith  is  less  ignorance  of  the 
meaning  and  function  of  art  and  an  inherited 
hatred  of  its  quality  and  its  power,  than 
they  are  the  natural  reactions  of  the  con- 
scious and  determined  rejection  of  the 
essential  philosophy  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
which  is  sacramentalism. 

With  the  first  perfecting  of  this  philos- 
ophy during  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  cen- 
turies along  the  three  parallel  lines  of 
Hugh  of  St.  Victor,  Duns  Scotus  and  St. 
Thomas  Aquinas,  came  concurrently  the 
brief  but  glorious  flowering  of  Christian 
civilization  from  1050  to  1300.  It  was 
then  that  not  only  philosophy,  but  theology, 
education,  literature  and  all  the  old  regen- 
erated arts,  and  many  new  arts  as  well, 
achieved  a  sort  of  grand  climacteric.  It 
was  during  the  same  period  that  human 
society,  political,  industrial  and  economic, 
accomplished  its  highest  perfection  under 
Christianity,  and  the  force  widespread 
throughout  the  social  organism  concen- 
trated itself  in  such  focal  points  of  dazzling 
light  as  St.  Louis,  St.  Thomas  and  Dante, 
the  Arthurian  legend,  the  perfected  Grego- 
rian music  and  Reims  Cathedral. 

The  whole  sacramental  system  of  philos- 
[95  1 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

ophy  was  of  an  almost  sublime  perfection 
and  simplicity,  and  the  Catholic  Sacraments 
were  both  its  goal  and  its  types.  If  they  had 
been  of  the  same  value  and  identical  in  na- 
ture they  would  have  failed  of  perfect  expo- 
sition, in  the  sense  in  which  they  were  types 
or  symbols.  They  were  not  this,  for  while 
six  of  the  explicit  seven  were  sufficiently 
of  one  mode,  there  was  one  where  the  con- 
ditions that  held  elsewhere  were  tran- 
scended and  where,  in  addition  to  the  two 
functions  it  was  instituted  to  perform,  it 
gave  through  its  similitude  the  clear  revela- 
tion of  the  most  significant  and  pregnant 
fact  in  the  vast  mystery  of  life.  I  mean 
of  course  the  Holy  Eucharist. 

I  desire  to  approach  this  consideration 
with  the  most  complete  abasement  and  pro- 
found reverence.  I  am  not  unmindful  of 
the  wise  saying  of  St.  Thomas  a  Kempis 
"'Twere  well  not  to  inquire  too  curiously 
into  the  nature  of  this  Sacrament,"  but  it 
is  impossible  to  complete  the  consideration 
of  what  is  the  essential  philosophy  of  Chris- 
tianity unless  this  point  is  made  clear.  The 
designation,  the  nomenclature,  dates  back 
perhaps  no  farther  than  Hildebert  of  Tours 
in  the  eleventh  century;  the  fact  is  attested 
[96] 


_THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

as  a  theological  and  philosophical  proposi- 
tion by  Paschasus  Radbertus  two  cen- 
turies earlier,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  time 
of  Charlemagne.  I  refer  to  the  dogma  of 
Transubstantiation  as  expressing  the  man- 
ner whereby  the  Real  Presence  of  God 
Incarnate  is  accomplished  in  the  Holy 
Eucharist. 

Now,  in  the  first  place,  I  wish  to  protest 
against  two  statements  that  are  frequently 
made  by  those  who  are  inimically  disposed 
towards  this  doctrine.  First,  that  it  is  only 
a  quibbling  over  definitions  that  do  not 
effect  the  fact;  second,  that  defence  of  Tran- 
substantiation is  an  affected  and  antiqua- 
rian attempt  to  restore  a  detail  of  an 
outworn  scholasticism.  I  maintain  that 
neither  is  true,  but  that,  on  the  contrary, 
Transubstantiation  meets  a  philosophical 
necessity  inherent  in  the  system  of  sacra- 
mentalism  which  is  afforded  by  no  other 
assumption  whatever.  There  are  four 
possible  theories :  1st,  the  Zwinglian,  which 
as  has  been  said,  actually  amounts  to  the 
"real  absence"  and  may  be  disregarded, 
since  it  is  contradicted  by  Christ  Himself, 
has  no  place  in  historic  Christianity  back 
to  the  Apostolic  Fathers,  and  is  rejected  by 
[97] 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

Ecclesia  Anglicana  and  even  by  the  Lu- 
theran and  Westminster  Confessions;  2nd, 
the  Lutheran,  that  is  to  say,  consubstantia- 
tion;  3rd,  the  theory  of  Osiander,  some- 
times called  "  impanation,"  where  Christ  is 
really  present  through  an  hypostatic  union ; 
these  last  two  covering,  I  suppose,  the  be- 
liefs of  the  great  majority  of  Anglicans; 
and  there  is  finally  the  Catholic  doctrine 
of  Transubstantiation. 

I  am  speaking  now  wholly  from  a  phil- 
osophical standpoint.  It  is  perhaps  true  that 
the  doctrines  of  Osiander  and  Luther,  as 
these  are  interpreted  by  Anglicans,  are 
sufficient  from  a  theological  and  a  devo- 
tional standpoint.  If  life  is  what  it  is  held 
to  be  by  the  philosophy  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  then  the  Catholic  theory  (or 
dogma,  as  it  has  been  since  the  Council  of 
Trent)  is  the  only  one  which  completes,  by 
its  symbolism  and  its  assertion  of  fact,  the 
sacramental  showing  forth,  through  great 
symbols,  of  the  nature  of  life. 

Under  all  other  interpretation  of  this 
great  Mystery,  which  is  the  crown  of  all 
the  Sacraments,  it  does  not  differ  from 
them  except  in  degree;  as  in  the  case  of 
the  water  of  Baptism,  the  material  agent 
[98] 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

remains  unchanged,  —  it  is  matter  still,  pre- 
cisely as  before  the  words  and  acts  of  Con- 
secration. The  wafer  is  still  unleavened 
bread,  the  wine  and  water  have  not  changed 
in  character;  they  have  simply  become  the 
vehicle  whereby  God  gives  Himself  to 
man.  At  the  most  the  substance,  bread,  and 
the  Substance,  the  Body  of  Christ,  exist  to- 
gether after  a  mystical  manner,  i.  e.  through 
consubstantiation. 

This  doctrine  of  the  Real  Presence  leaves 
the  elements  essentially  unchanged,  not  only 
in  their  substance  but  in  their  accidents;  but 
by  spiritual  interpenetration  they  become 
for  the  communicant,  the  offerer  of  the  Holy 
Sacrifice,  and  those  for  whom  it  is  offered, 
the  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ.  On  the  other 
hand  the  Catholic  doctrine  is  that  by  the  act 
of  Consecration  the  very  substance  of  the 
bread  and  wine  are  transformed  into  an 
altogether  different  Substance,  the  very 
Body  and  Blood  of  Christ,  only  the  acci- 
dents of  form,  colour,  ponderability,  etc., 
remaining. 

It  would  be  presumptuous  for  me  to 

compare   or  contrast  these  two  views  of 

the   Blessed   Sacrament   from   a   religious 

standpoint.     Speaking  philosophically,  the 

[  99  1 


GOLD,  FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

doctrine  of  Transubstantiation  certainly  re- 
veals and  substantiates  a  great  principle 
that  may  be  the  very  secret  of  life  itself  and 
the  reason  for  the  existence  of  the  world, 
while  its  abandonment  by  Protestants,  not 
to  mention  infidels  and  agnostics,  lies  close 
at  the  root  of  that  materialism  that  has 
reached  its  logical  climax  in  the  present 
world-wide  catastrophe. 

If  matter  is  forever  matter,  inert,  un- 
changeable, indestructible,  then  it  is  hard 
to  escape  the  sense  of  dualism  in  the  uni- 
verse: matter  and  spirit  uniting  in  man  as 
body  and  soul,  in  the  sacraments  as  the 
vehicle  and  the  essence,  but  temporally 
and  temporarily;  doomed  always  to  ulti- 
mate severance  either  by  death  or  by  the 
completion  of  each  sacramental  process. 
Suppose,  on  the  other  hand,  the  object  of 
the  universe  and  of  time  is  the  constant  re- 
demption and  transformation  of  matter, 
through  its  interpenetration  by  spirit 
through  the  power  of  God  the  Holy  Ghost. 
Suppose  that  the  miracle  of  Transubstantia- 
tion is  but  the  type  and  showing  forth  of 
the  incessant  process  of  life  whereby,  every 
instant,  matter  itself  is  being  changed  and 
glorified,  and  transferred  from  the  plane 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

of  matter  —  the  earth-plane  —  to  the  plane 
of  spirit — the  heavenly  plane.  Is  not  this 
the  meaning  of  St.  Paul's  "There  is  an 
earthly  body  and  there  is  a  spiritual  body; 
we  are  sown  in  corruption,  we  are  raised 
in  incorruptibility." 

If  this  is  so,  if  the  Incarnation  and 
Redemption  are  types  and  symbols  of  the 
Divine  process  forever  proceeding  here  on 
earth,  then  while  the  other  Sacraments  are 
in  themselves  not  only  agencies  of  grace, 
but  manifestations  of  that  process  whereby 
in  all  things  matter  is  used  as  the  vehicle 
of  the  spirit,  the  Mass,  transcending  them 
all,  is  not  only  Communion,  not  only  a 
Sacrifice  for  the  quick  and  the  dead  accept- 
able before  God,  but  it  is  also  the  unique 
symbol  of  the  redemption  and  transforma- 
tion of  matter,  since,  of  all  the  Sacraments, 
it  is  the  only  one  where  the  very  physical 
qualities  of  the  material  vehicle  are  trans- 
formed, and  while  the  accidents  alone  re- 
main, the  substance,  finite  and  perishable, 
becomes  in  an  instant  of  time,  and  by  the 
Divine  miracle  of  Transubstantiation,  in- 
finite and  immortal. 

I  confess  that  to  me  the  Catholic  argu- 
ment is  unanswerable  and  that  only  through 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND   MYRRH 

this  doctrine  is  the  philosophy  of  Christi- 
anity rounded  out  to  its  fullness.  "  This 
is  a  hard  saying:  who  shall  hear  it?"  and 
many  go  back  and  walk  no  more  with  Christ 
even  as  in  the  days  when  the  words  were 
spoken:  "Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you, 
except  ye  eat  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  man 
and  drink  His  blood,  ye  have  no  life  in 
you.  Whoso  eateth  my  flesh  and  drinketh 
my  blood,  hath  eternal  life;  and  I  will  raise 
him  up  at  the  last  day.  For  my  flesh  is 
meat  indeed  and  my  blood  is  drink  indeed. 
He  that  eateth  my  flesh  and  drinketh  my 
blood,  dwelleth  in  me  and  I  in  him.  As 
the  living  Father  hath  sent  me,  and  I  live 
by  the  Father:  so  he  that  eateth  me,  even  he 
shall  live  by  me.  This  is  that  bread  which 
came  down  from  heaven :  not  as  your  fathers 
did  eat  manna,  and  are  dead :  he  that  eateth 
of  this  bread  shall  live  forever." 

We  do  well  to  look  and  work  for  a  new 
brotherhood  of  man  on  earth  as  the  crown- 
ing gift  of  the  War:  we  do  better  when  we 
pray  and  labour  for  the  reunion  of  all 
Christendom  in  the  One,  Holy,  Catholic  and 
Apostolic  Church,  but  neither  the  one  nor 
the  other  is  to  be  achieved  unless  to  right 
religion  we  add  a  right  philosophy.  In- 
[  102  ] 


THE   PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

ternational  covenants  are  ropes  of  sand, 
without  international  love,  justice  and  fidel- 
ity, and  there  is  no  engine  or  device  of 
Christian  union  that  will  be  operative 
unless  it  is  energized  and  consecrated  by 
charity  —  caritas  —  and  a  consistent,  crea- 
tive, sovereign  philosophy  of  life.  If  we 
would  have  one  or  both,  the  Church  and  the 
Brotherhood  —  and  both  we  must  have  if 
we  are  to  escape  the  peril  of  a  new  Dark 
Ages  —  let  us  look  to  it  that  our  religion 
is  redeemed,  our  philosophy  recreated,  for 
otherwise  neither  individually  nor  collec- 
tively can  we  meet  and  turn  back  the  new 
hordes  of  Huns  and  Vandals  now  gathering 
for  another  onslaught  on  an  imperial  but 
futile  civilization  —  no  more  supreme  and 
irresistible  than  that  other  their  own  kind 
brought  to  an  end  in  fire  and  sack  and 
slaughter  just  fifteen  centuries  ago. 

I  desire  to  make  my  plea  for  the  restora- 
tion of  the  one  Christian  philosophy,  in. 
all  its  integrity  and  with  nothing  cut  out  or 
cast  aside,  solely  on  the  ground  of  its  ever- 
lasting truth;  but  even  in  the  acceptance 
of  truth  and  the  establishing  of  justice  there 
is  expediency.  As  the  first  step  towards  a 
new  world-order  is  a  right  philosophy  — 
[  103  1 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

the  power  "  to  put  things  in  their  right 
places  and  control  them  well,"  —  so  it  has  its 
bearings  on  matters  that  touch  us  at  present 
very  closely,  and  that  must  be  adjusted 
without  delay  if  we  are  to  play  our  part  in 
the  new  though  almost  desperate  Crusade 
for  the  redemption  of  the  Holy  Places  of 
the  human  soul.  For  the  lack  of  a  right 
philosophy  (or  of  any  philosophy  whatever, 
for  that  matter)  the  Councillors  of  the 
Nations  now  assembled  flounder  and  fall 
down,  while  the  nemesis  of  world-anarchy 
swiftly  overtakes  their  chaotic  delibera- 
tions. For  the  lack  of  a  right  philosophy 
we  of  Ecclesia  Anglicana  parallel  their 
courses,  and  have  done  so  time  out  of 
mind.  The  time  has  come  when  neither 
charity  nor  expediency  can  permit  the 
Church  to  continue  along  the  lines  of  uni- 
versal comprehension.  The  Great  Testing 
is  at  hand,  and  before  that  menace  of  in- 
comparable potency  the  House  of  Salvation 
cannot  rest  divided  against  itself.  As  it 
is  religion  alone,  the  religion  of  Christ 
crucified,  that  can  save  man  at  this  juncture, 
so  is  it  the  Catholic  Church,  through  its 
Sacraments  and  by  the  strength  of  its  sup- 
porting philosophy,  that  alone  can  act  as 
[  104  1 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

the  engine  of  redemptive  operation.  In 
the  red  light  of  menacing  dissolution  every 
predilection,  every  prejudice,  every  per- 
sonal conviction;  all  except  the  solemn  and 
unmistakable  mandate  of  conscience  alone, 
must  be  sacrificed  and  cast  aside.  The 
unity  of  the  Church  in  the  Catholic  Faith 
and  under  Catholic  Authority  is  the  instant 
and  desperate  necesssity. 

To  this  end  the  first  step  is  the  explicit 
acceptance  of  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  the 
Sacraments,  and  the  Catholic  philosophy 
of  sacramentalism,  with  Holy  Mass  as  the 
true  Communion  of  the  true  Body  and 
Blood  of  Christ,  as  an  ever  new  Sacrifice 
acceptable  before  God  for  the  sins  of  the 
whole  world,  and  as,  in  the  words  of  St. 
Thomas,  "the  end  and  aim  of  all  the 
Sacraments,"  with  Transubstantiation  as 
the  sufficient  expression  of  the  manner  of 
Christ's  Presence  therein. 

I  think  it  is  the  lack  of  this  clear  con- 
sciousness, theologically  and  philosophi- 
cally, that  is  answerable  for  the  vacillating 
and  compromising  courses  we  are  disposed 
to  follow,  now  at  this  critical  moment  when 
we  realize  that  unity  in  the  Church  is 
closely  bound  up  with  the  great  problem 
[  105  1 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND   MYRRH 

whether  civilization,  even  society  itself,  is 
to  continue  except  after  a  second  five  cen- 
turies of  Dark  Ages.  Rightly  and  hon- 
ourably we  look  on  the  one  hand  towards 
the  Protestant  denominations,  on  the  other 
towards  all  those  in  Communion  with  the 
Apostolic  See,  tentatively  approaching 
them  with  well-meant  advances,  in  the  des- 
perate hope  that  so  we  may  have  some  part 
in  the  restoration  of  Catholic  unity.  I  can- 
not avoid  the  conviction  that  the  lack  of  a 
definite  philosophy  has  much  to  do  with 
the  variousness  of  these  approaches  and  the 
very  great  unwisdom  of  some  amongst  them. 
A  case  in  point  is  the  question  of  the  ac- 
ceptance of  Episcopal  order  on  the  part  of 
those  bodies  that  have  rejected  it  and  still 
protest  they  desire  it  not  at  all.  It  ap- 
pears that  both  in  England  and  America 
propositions  have  from  time  to  time  been 
made  that  practically  amount  to  this:  that 
if  the  Protestant  bodies  will  only  accept 
the  Episcopate  as  a  fact,  no  questions  will 
be  asked  as  to  any  theories  they  may  hold 
as  to  its  nature  and  function.  Now  under 
correction  I  maintain  that  this  is  a  case  of 
failing  "to  put  things  in  their  right  order 
and  control  them  well."  If  the  Episcopate 
[  106] 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

represented  simply  a  form  of  order  and 
government,  even  with  Divine  sanction 
and  institution,  this  might  be  possible,  but 
in  that  case  I  submit  we  should  have  no 
moral  right  to  impose  it  as  an  absolute  con- 
dition, when  the  question  of  unity  is  in- 
volved. The  doctrine  of  the  Catholic 
Church  is  not  this,  however.  The  Episco- 
pate has  two  functions,  one  of  which  is  the 
supreme  governance  of  the  faithful;  but 
the  other  and  primary  function  is  the  trans- 
mission to  certain  men  of  the  Power  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  for  the  work  of  a  priest  in  the 
Church  of  God,  that  is  to  say,  first  of  all  for 
administering  the  Sacraments  of  Baptism, 
Penance,  Matrimony  and  Unction,  and, 
above  all,  the  Communion  of  the  Body  and 
Blood  of  Christ  and  the  offering  of  the 
Holy  Sacrifice.  In  other  words,  it  is  not 
the  fact  of  Episcopacy  that  matters,  it  is 
the  function,  and  the  chief  function  of  the 
Bishop  is  the  making  of  priests  who  can 
consecrate  the  Eucharist,  forgive  sins,  and 
offer  the  Holy  Sacrifice  of  the  Altar. 

If  then  we  had  a  clear  and  unanimous 

theological     conviction     fortified     by     an 

equally  clear  philosophy,  we  should  say  to 

the  ministers  of   those  whom  we  euphe- 

[  107] 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

mistically  call  "our  separated  brethren," 
not  "  accept  our  Bishops  and  let  them  have 
the  privilege  of  ordaining  you  after  their 
own  fashion  and  we  will  ask  no  embar- 
rasssing  questions  as  to  what  you  think  of 
it  all,  or  even  if  you  believe  you  have  so 
gained  nothing  you  did  not  have  before" 
but  rather  "  You  are  now  a  duly  accredited 
'  minister  of  the  Gospel ' ;  do  you  want 
to  be  made  a  priest?  If  you  do,  if  you  want 
to  act  as  the  agent  of  God,  through  the 
Power  of  the  Holy  Ghost  to  perform  the 
Divine  miracle  of  changing  bread  and  wine 
into  the  very  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ; 
if  you  want  to  gain  power  for  the  remitting 
of  sins,  and  if  you  want  to  offer  the  Holy 
Sacrifice  of  the  Altar  for  the  quick  and  the 
dead  and  for  the  sins  of  the  whole  world  — 
then  you  will  accept  the  fact  and  the  au- 
thority of  the  Episcopate,  and  the  laying 
on  of  hands  whereby  alone  a  priest  is  made 
by  the  covenant  of  God." 

So  also  would  it  be  in  the  case  of  laymen, 
who  no  longer  would  "  come  into  the 
Church"  because  they  had  ritualistic  lean- 
ings, or  preferred  a  different  social  atmos- 
phere, or  for  any  other  of  the  many  causes 
now  operative;  they  would  come  because 
[  108  ] 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

they  wanted  to  confess  their  sins  and  receive 
absolution,  because  they  wanted  to  feed  on 
Christ  Himself  through  Holy  Communion, 
because  they  desired  to  join  with  the  priest 
in  offering  the  Sacrifice  of  the  Mass  for 
themselves,  for  their  dead,  and  for  the 
world. 

From  the  lack  of  a  right  philosophy  our 
theology  is  led  along  divergent  lines  of 
strange  variation,  our  order  and  discipline 
are  weakened  to  the  point  of  nullity,  and 
even  our  religion  fails  of  its  fullest  pos- 
sibilities, and  I  know  of  no  way  in  which 
Ecclesia  Anglicana  can  rise  to  its  vast  op- 
portunity at  a  moment  when  its  peculiar 
qualities  are  most  needed  for  the  energiz- 
ing of  a  true  Vita  Nuova,  than  by  the  re- 
turn to  that  sacramental  philosophy  of  the 
Middle  Ages  which  is  the  only  sufficient 
system  and  the  only  intellectually  adequate 
system  thus  far  revealed  to  man. 

From  such  acceptance,  or  from  the  con- 
scious desire  for  it  and  progress  towards 
it,  will  follow  of  necessity  certain  acts  and 
ordinances,  for  every  spiritual  thing  has 
its  material  expression.  The  Mass  as  the 
one  obligatory  service  of  worship,  and  ac- 
cepted both  as  Communion  and  Sacrifice; 
[  109  ] 


GOLD,   FRANKINCENSE  AND  MYRRH 

formal  recognition  of  marriage  as  a  Sac- 
rament and  therefore  indissoluble;  the  res- 
toration of  sacramental  confession  as  the 
normal  method  of  spiritual  reconciliation; 
above  all,  the  establishing  of  Reservation 
of  the  Blessed  Sacrament,  not  only  for  sick- 
calls  but  specifically  for  private  and  public 
adoration,  as  the  recognized  custom  in  every 
cathedral  and  parish  church.  I  should 
perhaps  urge  the  last  as  the  most  immedi- 
ately necessary  of  all.  Where  the  Sacra- 
ment is  reserved  there  is  no  doubt  as  to  the 
Catholic  faithfulness  of  priest  and  people, 
and  as  matters  rest  with  us  today,  it  is  neces- 
sary that  the  Anglican  Church  should  stand 
forth  from  the  cowardice  and  time-serving 
of  an  older  age  to  bear  witness  to  the  truth 
of  the  Incarnation  and  the  Redemption  as 
these  are  shown  forth  in  the  Sacrament  of 
the  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ  Not  only 
does  the  Presence  of  Christ  in  the  taber- 
nacle transform  a  church  from  an  echoing 
conventicle  into  the  very  courts  of  God; 
not  only  does  it  teach  mutely  but  potently 
as  no  human  voice  can  do;  not  only  does  it 
lead  irresistibly  on  to  the  exaltation  of  the 
Mass  as  the  one  supreme  Sacrament  and 
to  the  other  six  as  of  equal  authority  and 
[  no] 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  NECESSITY 

obligation;  it  is  also,  and  for  my  present 
purpose  most  essentially,  the  explicit,  visi- 
ble teaching  of  that  philosophy  which  alone 
can  lead  men  "  to  put  things  in  their  right 
order  and  control  them  well,"  so  perhaps 
averting  from  us  the  nemesis  of  our  own 
follies  and  falsities,  now  increasingly  in- 
dicated in  the  Apocalyptic  happenings  of 
the  world. 

I  ask  then  a  return,  explicit  and  un- 
compromising, to  that  philosophy  of  life 
which  was  the  crowning  intellectual  glory 
of  the  great  era  of  the  Middle  Ages  when 
Christianity  was  fully  operative;  to  that 
philosophy  which  supplemented,  in  unity 
and  perfection,  that  Catholic  religion  that 
had  issue  in  a  righteous  and  beneficent 
social  system,  in  a  political  estate  marked 
by  justice  and  liberty,  and  in  a  great  and 
incomparable  plexus  of  all  the  arts  that 
flowered  at  last  in  that  Cathedral  of  Our 
Lady  of  Reims  which  its  antithesis,  in- 
carnate in  modernism,  could  only  desecrate 
and  destroy. 


[  in] 


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